Paul Revere Square

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PAUL

REVERE

SQUARE

LOUISE ANDREWS KENT

Novels

The Terrace
Paul Revere Square

Children's Stories
The Red Rajah
Douglas of Porcupine
Two Children of Tyre
He Went with Marco Polo
He Went with Vasco da Gama

(with Ellis Parker Butler)

Jo Ann, Tomboy

Xlibenifiie Cambritige

COPYRIGHT, 1939* BY LOUISE ANDREWS KENT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

I. GASTRONOMIC INTRODUCTION S

11. LUNCHEON IS SERVED 14

III. FAMILY AFFAIRS 21

IV. PEACHBLOW S4

V. CONFERENCE 41

VI. DRESS MAKES A DIFFERENCE 47
VIL TOTAL ECLIPSE 56

VIII. EXCLUSIVE ENTERTAINMENT 65

IX. SILK HAT 80

X. REAL, PERSONAL, AND MIXED 93
XL ARRIVAL AT NIGHT 105

XII.

MATCHES

115

XIII.

PROPOSAL

121

XIV.

DARKNESS

127

XV. REPUTATION UNTARNISHED 133

vi

CONTENTS

XVL DETECTIVE METHODS 145
XVII. SOUND MATHEMATICS 154
XVIII. COURSE LAID OUT 166
XIX. TERRAIN JUMP 176
XX. HORSES AND ORCHIDS 183
XXL BLACKMAIL: POLITE, OF COURSE 195
XXII. THE LISTENER 205
XXIII. HOSPITAL 221
XXIV. LOVE IN A CHINA SHOP 234
XXV. NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED 242
XXVL VISIT TO THE SICK 259
XXVII. PIRACY IN MUDTIME 266
XXVIII. LIGHT 281

XXIX. USEFUL INFORMATION 290

XXX. SURPRISE FOR PETER SOI

XXXI. TOO MANY TELEGRAMS 311
XXXII. WINDING ROAD 322
XXXIII. HILLTOP 331
XXXIV. BURWELL IS SATISFIED 346

XXXV. PEACHBLOWi DAWN 860

PAUL

REVERE

SQUARE

GASTRONOMIC INTRODUCTION

It was through two fried eggs that Diana Joceleyn finally
met her Uncle Nicholas.

She had been living in his house for a week — the grayest,
gloomiest week of her life. Even the months since her fa-
ther’s death had not seemed so dreary. The neighbors in
East Alcott had been kind, and curious. Even if in some
cases curiosity had outweighed kindness, it was better than
the blank indifference of Paul Revere Square.

Then in East Alcott there had been the bustle of getting
ready for the auction and the excitement of the auction it-
self. There had always been the hope in the back of her
mind that in the crowd there would appear some distinguished
stranger — she had always thought he would have a monocle
and a white mustache that pricked up towards it — who
would recognize her father’s genius and buy his pictures.
This expert had never materialized, so the pictures had
been stacked away in the Wilburs’ barn. Bertha Wilbur
had covered them with an old quilt.

4

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Luckily the enthusiasm for boxes of old iron, for glass
bowls acquired with packages of X-ray Cleanser, and for art
squares — the name optimistically given in East Alcott to
any floor covering larger than a bathmat — had brought in
enough to pay the bills. There were not many. TheJoceleyn
hatred of debt lived on in Stephen in spite of the impractical
streak that had made an unsuccessful painter of him and lost
him his fortune. Last year he had sold the big house with its
view across surging billows of hills to Couching Lion’s grave
profile. He and Diana had moved into the red cottage near
the store.

She felt homesick suddenly, not only for Couching Lion
and her father’s singing as he painted, but for the rhythm of
Vermont speech. It was like a valley road, she thought.
Sometimes it swooped and dipped. Sometimes it ran along
level a little way. It might come to an abrupt stop or slide
along easily or rise suddenly to an unexpected height. No-
thing could force the road into a rectangular pattern. No-
thing could force the speech into the neatly clipped phrases
of Paul Revere Square.

To be sure Diana’s experience of conversation in Paul
Revere Square was not large. There had been the two small
boys who roller-skated past the open window one afternoon.
And the fat man with a briefcase, who said to a thin man
with a green bag: 'If that lunatic would only give us a
breathing-spell . .

The thin man had merely gnmted.

There was the lady in the plaid tweeds with the five
pepper-and-salt tweed dogs and the picturesque woman, us-
ing two Russian wolf hounds in her scheme of exterior decora-
tion, who seemed impervious to the plaid-tweed one’s con-
versation, which was technical.

GASTRONOMIC INTRODUCTION

3

‘Nothing like vermifuge. Quarts of it. I use quarts of it,’
roared the stout dog-lover.

None of these remarks was addressed to Diana. In fact
the only ones that were had consisted of phrases such as,
‘Very good, moddom,’ ‘I could hardly say, moddom,’ and
‘Luncheon is served, moddom.’

These represented Burwell, the butler’s, contribution to
the art of conversation. Compared to the two aged ladies
who waited on the table at lunch, Burwell was positively
loquacious.

Diana dipped a heavy silver spoon into a Dresden cup.
There was a gray liquid in the cup. She supposed it was
soup. The iridescent bubbles on top suggested that it was
not water.

‘Perhaps there is soap in it,’ Diana thought, stirring it
cautiously. ‘It smells a little like soap.’

Minna, the one of the two maids whose feet seemed to
hurt the least, waddled up with three health wafers on a
silver plate. Diana took two and looked wistfully at the
other. It would taste, she knew, of hay — not of this year’s
hay, but of the kind left in wisps on the rafters from last
year. Still it was more strengthening than the lukewarm
soup. She did not take the third health wafer. Mmna would
consider her greedy.

Diana put down her spoon. Minna lumbered away with
the cup. Sarah, who had been standing beside the black-
walnut sideboard with a disapproving expression about her
elbows, limped to the table and removed non-existent
crumbs with a piece of folded damask.

‘I hope it will not be the lamb again,’ Diana thought. But
although it looked like chips from the wood basket, it was

6

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

the lamb. She could tell because chips do not have streaks
of gristle.

Once more there were boiled potatoes, dark and damp in a
Minton dish. And yet again parsnips. Some people like
parsnips.

Diana thought: ‘I could go back to East Alcott. Bertha
Wilbur would let me work for my board. They never have
parsnips till March. But I can’t go. I haven’t money enough.
And I haven’t seen Uncle Nicholas. Perhaps he’ll send for
me today.’

Sarah hunted for more crumbs with the shining damask.
She carried away on a silver tray the ones she had not found.
She breathed hard from her exertions.

Diana looked out into Paul Revere Square. Through the
right-hand window she could see the tail of Paul Revere’s
horse, a piece of iron railing, some brown grass. Behind the
flowing bronze tail was the dull red brick, white paint, pol-
ished brass, and shining glass — some of it purple — of the
houses across the Square. It was raining and the water was
dripping off Paul Revere’s horse’s tail.

Even in the rain the Square looked more cheerful than
Nicholas Joceleyn’s dming-room with its dark green walls
and mustard-brown curtains and black-walnut woodwork.

‘I wonder if rich people always have such ugly houses, and
such awful food.’

Diana tried to chisel some of the tapioca cream out of the
crystal dessert glass. Fish eggs and glue her father used to
call it. She had never known why before.

‘It must be an old family receipt,’ she thought. ‘No won-
der father went to Vermont.’

She gave up the unequal combat with the tapioca. While

GASTRONOMIC INTRODUCTION

7

the ceremony of the fingerbowl was being carried out, she
looked first out the left-hand window through which she
could see Paul Revere’s horse’s nose and a bare magnolia
tree, then into the pier glass between the windows.

It was a misty, wavy greenish glass in a dim, greenish-gold
frame. In its depths Nicholas Joceleyn’s dining-room looked
to his niece like something under the sea; like some dark
cavern hung with brown and green kelp. Those dark carved
shapes — cupboards merely to Minna and Sarah — were the
fittings of some lost ship, a Joceleyn ship that had sailed out
of Boston for Canton. Down she went m a williwaw back of
Cape Horn and her cargo with her. There was porcelain in
it: the blue Canton, the Nanking, the green Fitzhugh, the
Lowestoft with its painted ship and its starred blue border.
The twisted handles and the pomegranate-knobbed covers
floated and drifted and wavered in the green glass.

If a mermaid were needed, Diana would do. She had
bright gold hair, not swirling around like the hair of most
mermaids, but braided in a neat crown around her head. In
spite of the dim green light this mermaid had no undersea
unhealthy pallor. Her pink seashell-tinted cheeks indicated
that she must have spent a good deal of time sunning herself
on the rocks. She also had the unmermaidlike attributes of a
short tilted nose with six freckles on it, soft velvety-brown
eyes under arched brows of dark gold, and a mouth and chin
that looked somehow older than the rest of her face: older,
as old as most mermaids, a ripe old age, twenty-one and a
quarter, say. Or perhaps only sadder than most mermaids, a
race with enviable facial control.

Diana herself did not notice these details.

She only thought: ‘I look green in that glass. How many

8

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

days shall I sit here, looking green, greener? Waiting? Until
I look like an old sea urchin . . . Can urchins be old? Well,
like an old moss-covered statue — sea moss, of course . . .
Forever, probably. In this house nothing ever happens,’

She was wrong. She had only minutes to wait.

As she left the dining-room, Burwell came through the
hall. He was carrying a tray well loaded with porcelain and
silver. There was food on it, too. Food that suggested that
the Joceleyn kitchen led a double life. Impossible, remember-
ing the soup, the prehistoric scrags of lamb, to imagine that
out of it could have come this noble fish, brown, buttery, hot
in its nest of lemon and parsley.

Diana gazed hungrily after it as Burwell stamped up the
dark stairs and disappeared into the room at the head of
them.

A voice from it growled: ‘What’s that thing you’ve got
there? ’

‘Mr. Eben sent it. Thinking you might fancy it. It’s —
sea-trout, sir,’ wheezed Burwell.

‘There is no such fish. Take it away!’ roared the voice.
‘I asked for eggs, didn’t I? TWO . . . FRIED . . . EGGS.’

‘Uncle Nicholas sounds better,’ thought Diana.

She sat down in the room near the front door. It was
furnished in a style that had much in it of the cozmess of
Napoleon’s tomb, but at least it was warm, which was not
true either of her own room or of the den of rubber plants,
bronze statues, and locked glass cases known as the library.

Burwell came panting down the stairs again. Diana heard
him shouting down the dumb waiter. He did not sound
pleased.

Last night’s Transcript was the most up-to-date reading

GASTEONOMIC INTRODUCTION

9

matter on tlie table. That is, part of it was there. Burwell
kept in touch with aflFairs in China and all the kitchen with
the current trend in debutante parties. The classified ad-
vertisements were intact.

Diana began to read them.

A kind, cheerful, experienced woman would take your
dog to walk . . . (and give him vermifuge.^ I’d take him
myself, the darling!) . . . Apples wrapped in cellophane . . .
(But they haven’t thought of anything to wrap cellophane
in yet) . . . Accordion lessons . . . (Minna and Sarah wouldn’t
like it) . . . Sell Christmas cards. Handsome profit . . . (But
you have to buy the cards and I have only $2.71. Besides,
I don’t know anyone in Boston except Minna and Sarah and
Burwell. And Burwell is the only one who seems to know
me. Also they are whimsical cards. And Burwell looks as
whimsical as Plymouth Rock) . . .

Burwell plodded upstairs again.

Diana’s eye fell on another advertisement.

Would you like a LISTENER? I will listen to your troubles,
the story of your golf match, the bright sayings of your little
ones. Tell me what you think of the Administration. I never
answer back. A slight extra charge for looking at motion
pictures of your trip abroad. The Help A Bit Shop. Bulfinch
7770.

Diana chuckled.

T would like a Listener,’ she thought, ‘only, of course, I
can’t pay for one. And I really haven’t much to say because
nothing ever hap ’

Upstairs there was a crash.

‘I said FRIED EGGS! EGGS! EGGS! Not corrugated
paper fried in lard. I said BASTED! Hannah knows I

10

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

want them basted. Who cooked these slices of giraffe with
the hair on?’

‘I think,’ Diana murmured, ‘that my Uncle Nicholas is a
lot better.’

Burwell’s voice — he sounds like a nervous steam roller
with a sore throat, Diana thought — said: ‘But, Mr.
Joceleyn, sir. Hannah is out. It’s Wednesday, sir. Directly
she cooked the fish, she went. It was the kitchenmaid cooked
them . . . The china, sir. You’ve no call to break it, sir.
Forty years, man and boy . . . But a Dresden plate . . . Egg
on the curtains . . . Mr. Joceleyn, it’s not like you, sir.’

‘My aim’s bad or that dinosaur’s egg would be on you,
not the curtains. Go back and get me some decently cooked
hen’s eggs. And BASTED. Next time I won’t miss you.
Did you hear me? ’

‘Yes, Mr. Joceleyn.’

Diana looked out into the hall. Burwell’s neatly striped
gray trousers flickered through the black-walnut bannisters.
His face was a reddish purple and he muttered disjointedly :
‘Forty years . . . curtains . . . Dresden . . . No call.’

‘A fried egg,’ roared the voice from above, ‘should look
like a snow-covered hill with the dawn on it. Like a bride
with a chiffon veil over her face. Do you hear me, Burwell? ’

‘Yes, Mr. Joceleyn.’

‘Not like blotting-paper. Or honeycomb tripe. Or a
broiled bath sponge. Do you hear that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Burwell had reached the bottom step. He leaned against
the wall. Minna and Sarah from the dining-room doorway
looked aghast at the tray with its fragments of china and egg-
smeared napkins. To Burwell’s low-voiced suggestion that

GASTRONOMIC INTRODUCTION

H

one of them should try her hand at the eggs, they retorted,
as to a suggested indecency, that cooking was not their
work. Then they retreated to the china closet and set
up a discreet clinking of glass and silver.

Diana said gently: T’ll cook them, Burwell. My father
liked them that way.’

That Burwell’s face could actually shine with a mixture
of relief, humility, and friendliness had to be seen to be
believed. Diana hardly believed it herself as she hurried
after him down the dark flight of stairs to the kitchen.

The news that Mr. Nicholas Joceleyn did not care for his
eggs turned and fried hard had evidently penetrated below
stairs. At the table sat a figure with a blue-and-white
checked apron thrown over its head.

From under the apron came moans, sniffs, and a voice
that wailed: ‘Wirra, wisha, what’ll I do at all?’

‘ Get me some eggs, some table butter, and a clean frying-
pan,’ Diana said crisply.

The apron came down revealing a mop of curly brown hair,
a pink, tearstained face with enormous gray eyes and a
small mouth, that promptly swallowed its last moan, grinned
cheerfully, and remarked: ‘Praise the saints!’

‘When I heard them roars out of him I thought sure my
Aunt Hannah would have me killed,’ she added, slamming a
frying-pan down on a range about the size and plan of a
pipe organ. ‘There’s good heat in it now. Miss, and here’s
the thread and needle, though how anyone can baste an egg
and it slipping around, I wouldn’t be knowing. I sewed up
fowls home, but there’s queer ways here!’

Basting, Diana said gravely, was only pouring hot fat
over the top of the egg while it was cooking. It made a

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white coating over the yolk and the whole egg got done at
once, and none of it got too hard. Just right, in fact.

Her uncle would like hot toast. And a hot plate. That
blue willowware one on the back of the stove would do. And
a hot soup dish to put over it. Hot willowware was better
than cold Dresden. If Burwell would fix a tray with a clean
napkin she would take it up herself. Because she could run
and Burwell must be tired, climbing all those stairs. And
could she borrow an apron, please, a white one?

The kitchenmaid actually knew how to make toast, and
she produced a white apron as stiff as if it had been hung out
to dry at forty below, an apron of sobriety.

Burwell seemed to have left his somewhat peevish dignity
upstairs. He beamed upon Diana as she slid her arms through
the apron straps. It was too big for her, but so were most of
her clothes, he had noticed. He wished now that he had not
said so firmly in the servants’ dining-room that Stephen
Joceleyn’s daughter had No Style.

‘Countrified. Very countrified,’ he had told Hannah.

He regretted the remark now. He agreed benevolently
about the toast; agreed that Mr. Joceleyn would like tea.

‘There’s tea on the back of the stove. It’s got good
strength to it,’ suggested the kitchenmaid helpfully.

Diana said that if it reached Mr. Joceleyn, they would
all be drowned in it and they would deserve it.

‘Get his own Lapsang Souchong and his teapot,’ she said.
‘The flowery Canton one in the red-lined basket.’

Seeing Burwell’s plump cheeks lengthen in surprise, she
added, 'All Joceleyns have them. They all sneeze three
times if they sneeze once, make Lapsang Souchong in those
teapots, and eat lemon pie with a spoon. Don’t they?’

GASTRONOMIC INTRODUCTION

13

She smiled and Burwell smiled too. It hardly seemed to
[hurt his pursed-up mouth at all. He produced the teapot
and a high-shouldered Lowestoft tea-caddy. The kettle
was just starting to sing.

Diana slid the eggs into the hot butter. There was a
delicious sizzling and popping. She spooned up the hot
liquid and poured it over the tops. The kitchen filled with
fragrance; the clean, crisp smell of toasting bread mingling
with the smoky, flowery scent as boiling water met the tea
m the warmed pot.

In the pan bells of gold changed to pink suns veiled by the
morning mist.

Mr. Nicholas Joceleyn’s eggs were ready.

LUNCHEON IS SERVED

In the black-and-gold lacquer bed with its curtains of
faded crimson Nicholas Joceleyn sat gasping for breath.
Pain clawed at his chest and flickered along his left arm. He
reached for the box of pearl-colored pills, but the pain eased
off and he lay back against the pillows. He was so pale now
that in the gray afternoon light from Paul Revere Square
the only thing that showed he was there at all was the
straight black bar of silky hair that separated the benevolent
mass of his forehead from the fierce curve of his nose and his
tired, pale eyes.

A little color began to come back into his face and thin
lips. It was possible to see now that, in spite of its many
inconsistencies, in spite of the hollowed cheeks and gaunt
jaw, it was an impressive face, even a handsome one.

He was scowling, but the scowl was for himself.

‘Thought I’d learned my lesson,’ he muttered. ‘Fool . . .
Attack two weeks ago . . . ought to have been enough. Grippe
hasn’t helped it . . . Seventeen kinds of a fool . . . Lomond

LUNCHEON IS SERVED

15

told me . . . Talking to myself/ he added, hardly above a
whisper — ^must be going crazy/

He was silent, but the voice ran on in his head: ‘Burwell’s
right. Ought not to throw things. Unworthy of a man of
my vocabulary.’

His lips twitched a little and fell into a gentler curve.
There Was a gleam of amusement in the light gray eyes.

‘Poor Burwell,’ he thought. ‘He’s probably lost a couple
of pounds. Well it won’t do him any harm. Those eggs —
why, it’s mutiny, barratry, and an agrarian outrage. Not
to mention that fish. A sea-trout indeed! Eben ought to
stick to skiing. What did he want, I wonder? Something,
I’ll bet a couple of fish bones. Never knew him to come
around with a tactful little present unless . . . Well, he’s the
only one of the lot who works anyway.’ Nicholas Joceleyn
muttered and shut his eyes again.

He tried to shake off the thought of his nephews. There
were five of them, and there was something about each one
that troubled hina. There was Bill Shatswell who had spent
most of his twenty-eight years and large sums of money in
the society of horses. Occasionally Bill wandered in and out
of some business, but as most of them seemed to interfere
with that noble animal, the horse, they did not hold Bill’s
attention long. Just now it was real estate. So far Bill’s
preoccupation with it had not distracted his attention from
his riding. Bill had married when he was only nineteen.
Now he was a widower with two children. He lived with his
mother-in-law in Paul Revere Square and seemed cheerful
about it. Anyone who could live cheerfully with Mrs.
Caldwell Nesbitt must have a remarkable disposition. In
fact the excellence of Bill’s disposition was generally acknow-
ledged.

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

He was the son of Nicholas Joceleyn’s sister Bessie. Bessie
Shatswell had — as she often remarked with her usual vague
good nature — two only children. Singleton was eleven
years younger than Bill and as different as a young hawk is
from a handsome mallard drake. Mrs. Shatswell was rather
like a benevolent puddle duck who had hatched both. She
spoiled them, of course. Everyone in the Square said so.
Bill’s capacity for backing the wrong horse in a steeplechase
did not seem to trouble her any more than Singleton’s fero-
cious manners and his habit of blowing out fuses with his
electrical experiments. Of course it was inconvenient to
have the lights go out just when she was entertaining her
bridge club, but then Sing always replaced the fuse. And he
was handy about fixing the electric iron on Tuesdays. As
to the scowl that Singleton at seventeen kept to face the
world with, his mother had never seen it. People in Bessie
Shatswell’s company generally showed a softer side if they
had one.

That either of the Shatswells would ever be of use in
Joceleyn & Company: Tea Merchants, never occurred to
their uncle. Sometimes he thought that Peter Lobanov, son
of his sister Sophia and that Russian Prince, might have
helped. But of course Sophia had put a spoke in that wheel.
Sophia had never objected to absorbing her share of the
profits of Joceleyn & Company, but when it came to having
her son — a sensitive, artistic boy like Peter — tied down to
that sordid routine, she rebelled.

Peter had seemed happy enough to his uncle during the
two weeks he had spent in the packing department. He had
made numerous mistakes, of course; had even disastrously
managed to get a batch of the Red Star blend into the Gold

LUNCHEON IS SERVED

17

Star boxes. He was rather like a puppy playing with a new
ball. He dashed all over the place upsetting things. His fair
hair was always on end. He spilled ink, spilled papers,
spilled tea. Yet somehow Nicholas Joceleyn felt that Peter
might have been some good — sometime. There had been
no chance to prove Nicholas wrong. Almost before the Red
Star tea had been returned to the proper boxes, Peter was
on his way to Paris to study painting.

It would be a shame to stifle his talent, his mother alleged.
She went to Paris too. And to Cannes and the Lido and
Palm Beach and Bermuda. She took Peter to all those
centers of art and culture. There was a picture he painted
in Bermuda of a human eye in a Dry Martini that was con-
sidered a great advance on anything he had done in Paris.

Nicholas Joceleyn did not care particularly what Peter
painted. He had written Peter off his books and could think
of him without any feeling beyond a weary pity. The sore
' spot in his mind was that made by his namesake, Nicholas
Joceleyn II. Like most sore spots it was hard to keep out of
the way. It was like an infected finger. Even when it
stopped aching there was the temptation to press it and see
if it still hurt. What Nick had done still hurt.

There was nothing really wrong about it. Nicholas Joce-
leyn was fair-minded enough to admit that. It was only
that Nick, who had gone out to China as a buyer of tea for
Joceleyn & Company, had left them in the lurch and started
flying for Chiang Kai-Shek’s army. Nick had always been
crazy about planes and was a skillful pilot. It was easy
enough to understand why he had been tempted. Adventure,
Nicholas Joceleyn realized, must be fun — if you could
afford it. He never had been able to himself.

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

He did not blame Nick for getting rid of the headaches
caused by trying to buy tea in China with the Japanese
blowing the place to bits. It was only that he had always
hoped that Nick would come home and settle down in Paul
Revere Square, marry some nice girl, walk across the Com-
mon every .morning beside him to the big building with the
gilt dragons fighting over the door, some day be President of
the company.

It had been just wishful thinking, he realized. There was
no reason why Nick, who had plenty of money — the money
that his father had made in the tea business — should settle
down to the humdrum life of Paul Revere Square.

There was no one but Eben. He was a conscientious chap,
Eben. Early to bed. Prompt at the office. His list of virtues
was a long one. Only somehow Eben invariably annoyed
his uncle.

‘That sea-trout. Ridiculous. It was a haddock probably.
And I^m still hungry,’ Nicholas Joceleyn thought crossly.
‘Lunch — why, it’s supper-time practically.’

He considered roaring at Bur well again. There was a
certain amount of pleasure in making Burwell jump, but
with the memory of the pain that had bitten its fierce way
into his arm, it scarcely seemed worth while. Besides, there
were footsteps on the stairs : light, swift footsteps, not Bur-
well’s thumping tread.

‘Afraid to come up,’ Nicholas Joceleyn thought, grimly
amused, and putting out a thin hand to switch on the goose-
necked lamp.

This anachronism in the big room with its tea-chest paper
of pale gold, its clash of crimson brocade and scarlet lacquer,
threw a faint circle of bluish light on the old man’s sharply
etched face and narrow, big-veined hands.

LUNCHEON IS SERVED

19

Outside the circle of light the room was dim. Diana had
a confused sense of strange shapes: camels and horses and
elephants; of jars of colors only half seen — pale greens and
, grays and blues, of a subtle blending of all three, of gleaming
red that was neither scarlet nor crimson. She did not speak,
but quietly set down the tray on the invalid’s table that
stretched across the bed.

Her uncle said nothing. He lifted the Canton teapot from
its hot scarlet nest, poured out the tea into the kitchen cup of
blue willow, breathed iu its warm perfume, and left it cooling,
a little pool of pale, clear topaz, while he attacked the eggs.
About their gold-and-white perfection, or the smoky, pun-
gency of the tea, or the hot crispness of the toast, he said
nothing. To Diana this silence implied praise. Her father
had seldom mentioned the food unless there was something
wrong with it.

Probably, she thought, all Joceleyn men were like that.
The idea that all men were like that did not occur to her.
She had not known many.

She waited quietly for the tray. Prom the window she
could see down into Paul Revere Square. Darkness was
creeping up out of it. Rain slithered down into it and over
the cars parked across the street. Two of them were high-
studded limousines with sharp-angled roofs and radiators:
the kind of car that has plenty of room for a pompadour with
a dowager’s stiff-crowned hat perched on it and a wired
velvet bow perched on the hat. One of the cars had brass-
trimmed lamps beside the windshield. Their polish shone
b'kp gold in the glow from the street lights.

Through the gray afternoon lighted windows began to
make a patchwork pattern, bright orange oblongs on dull

20

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

red brick. In one bouse four women — the mountainous
hats seemed to indicate that they belonged in the high-
ceilinged limousines — were playing bridge. In the next
house two children stood on their heads on the window-seat.
For a moment their feet and legs were black against the light
behind them. Then they vanished into the dark end of the
room.

Behind her Nicholas Joceleyn put down his fork with a
small sigh of contentment.

Diana turned from the window.

‘May I take your tray?’ she asked softly.

She stood a little outside the circle of light. To the man
in the bed she was only a figure in black and white with a
faint glow of gold about the head.

‘Carol,’ he murmured, ‘Carol . . .’ and put his hand over
his eyes for a moment. Then he dropped it again and said:
‘Yes, I’ve finished. Take the tray, please, and send Burwell
to me.’

Diana bent over and picked up the tray. She heard him
say ‘Carol!’ again. He spoke more clearly this time, but his
voice still had a note of perplexity, and his dark brows were
twisted anxiously as he looked up at her.

He said abruptly: ‘I feel . . . dizzy — my eyes . . . But the
tea . . . real enough. And the eggs, you cooked them, didn’t
you? Kitchenmaid . . . Hannah’s niece, aren’t you?’

‘No, Uncle Nicholas. I’m yours.’

FAMILY AFFAIRS

It has been well said of Paul Revere Square that if Boston is
the Hub of the Universe, the Square is the emblem on the
hub cap. Residents quote this remark pretty often, but add
deprecatingly : ‘Of course it’s all nonsense.’ It is a good idea
if you are a stranger — that is, anyone living outside the
Square — not to agree with this polite hypocrisy.

People generally attribute the saying to Bertram Shats-
well. Mrs. Shatswell has always encouraged her husband
in his literary career. Nothing has been grudged — neither
limp leather, nor deckle-edged paper, nor ribbon markers —
to preserve Bertram Shatswell’s writings for posterity.

They are not merely epigrams. There are poems too,
mostly in couplets. Mr. Shatswell rediscovered the rhymed
couplet long before Ogden Nash did and the Shatswell
couplets rhyme correctly. There are few houses m the
Square that are not equipped with the copy of the Ode that
Mr. Shatswell wrote at the time of the Harvard Tercenten-
ary. Its crimson cover with the white stamping makes a

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

cheerful spot on many a library table. Miss Lucinda Popham,
the only resident of the Square who has actually read it,
pronounces the Ode a very fine piece of work. Miss Popham
speaks as an expert, although her own poems are mostly in
manuscript. Perhaps her best-known one was written ^For
the Transcript ' about the tulips in the Public Garden. It is
a double ballad beginning, ^Dame Clara Butt in satin rose,’
and with the refrain, ‘Where are the flow’rs of yesterday.’
Miss Popham sent it out for a Christmas card two years ago.
Hand-colored, of course. It is surprising how often a some-
what faded copy comes to the surface of the papers in Miss
Popham’s desk basket.

When anyone refers to her as Paul Revere Square’s poet,
Miss Popham always shakes her head with that languid
motion that sets her long seed-pearl earrings swaying, trills
her musical little laugh and says: ‘Oh, but you forget Mr.
Shatswell. He is our poet!’

It must be a little disappointing to Miss Popham that Mr.
Shatswell never contradicts this statement.

It was an outsider, someone from Commonwealth Avenue,
who said: ‘As Boston is to other cities, so Paul Revere
Square is to Boston — a little colder, a little shabbier, a
little more complacent.’

This young man doubtless thought he was being cutting,
but no one in the Square was annoyed. Complacency is
unpleasant, but somehow no one minds being accused of it.
At least no one who is complacent.

Anyway the Square has a right to a little self-satisfaction.
Statistics show that there are more Phi Beta Kappa Keys in
it than there are cocktail-shakers; more doctors’ gowns with
velvet-striped sleeves than there are negligees with marabout

FAMILY AFFAIRS

£3

trimming; more grand pianos than radios; more flannel
petticoats than in any area of its size in the United States,
including Alaska.

It is the only Square in Boston where you can find both
a complete folio of Audubon’s ‘Birds of America’ and a
first edition of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover.’

No one in the Square owns a Pekinese.

No one in the Square has ever endorsed a cigarette; nor a
complexion invigorator. (The idea that the countenances
of the residents would not make merchandise sufficiently
alluring is merely a symptom of jealousy in the hearts of
outsiders.)

People sonaetimes talk as if all the houses in the Square
were alike. This, of course, is nonsense and yet there are
certain comnnon traits. For instance, although everyone in
the Square h.as a piano, the instruments are for the most
part mute supporters of books, pieces of faded brocade,
Japanese jars, and bowls into which small pieces of mahogany
veneer, remo-wed in dusting the furniture, and paper clips
mysteriously find their way. All the houses have electric
light, but most of the bulbs seem to exist for the purpose of
being kept turned off. There are telephones, but the numbers
are not in the book. Rugs must come from somewhere or
other east of S nez, and there is always one bedroom where the
floor is still covered with straw matting. Furnace heat has
not generally penetrated to this room, and it has a bunch of
peacock’s featfcers on the mantelpiece. Red or green cartridge
paper is a favorite wall covering m the Square, but there is
a considerable latitude m papers. A Japanese grass cloth,
once green, now? faded to a bilious tan, is always satisfactory.
There is also qiuite a variety of vegetable life, but a Boston

24

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

fern, rather dry in spots, is eminently correct. There is
usually a bust of Homer or Sophocles or someone’s great-
uncle on top of a bookcase.

Almost any visitor to the Square soon discovers that
Princess Lobanov’s house is an exception to all the rules.
Peter’s studio alone is a shock to the nerves of the Square,
but it is generally hastily passed over with the same pained
politeness accorded to insolvency and a smell of cabbage.
It is a little difficult to ignore Peter’s career because his
mother refuses to let him carry it on in what she calls a
hole-and-corner sort of way. She is not, she often says, the
sort of mother who is jealous of her son’s temperament.
No one can say that she ever discouraged Peter from his
painting.

She has opened up the top story of the house with a
splendid north window so that he can have a good light and
she is always buying gorgeous lengths of brocade for Peter
to drape behind his sitters. There are half-finished portraits
of almost everyone he knows leaning about the studio.
Perhaps the tone of them, which suggests a ripe Roquefort
cheese, has kept Peter from actually having a commission.
He has taken to painting still life now. The picture that so
annoyed his Uncle Nicholas — the one with the tray of
Martinis, all of which contained olives, except the one with
the human eye in it — was mentioned in Time last year

Old Ebenezer Joceleyn left Joceleyn & Company, Import-
ers of Fine Teas, to his six children. Each was to have a
sixth of the profits. To the sons was left the actual control
of the business, with the stipulation that if any of them did
not work in the Company, he must sell his share to the
others.

FAMILY AFFAIRS

25

All three sons were in the business at the time their father
died: Nicholas was Treasurer of the Company; John was in
China, buying tea; Stephen, the youngest, half-brother of
the other five, was in the Accounting Department. By the
time Ebenezer Joceleyn had been dead a year, John was
exploring the Gobi and not finding whatever it is that people
don’t find there. Stephen was studying painting in Rome to
the great benefit of the firm’s ledgers. Sophia had married
her Russian Prince and was already making those experi-
ments with the hair and complexion that later became the
cause of so many raised eyebrows in Paul Revere Square.
Sophia had always been the ugly duckling of the family.
The general opinion in the Square was that it would have
been more respectable if she had not turned into a swan.
Especially into such a sophisticated swan. Of course the
Square’s ideas about swans were largely derived from the
swan boats in the Public Garden . . .

Nicholas Joceleyn bought out his two brothers. He had to
cramp himself to do it. He even gave up buying porcelains.
There was a pair of blue hawthorn jars that he still regretted.
But John — pricked a little by conscience perhaps — had
helped with the collection; found the Celadon bowls, the
ox-blood vase, and at prices, as he wrote, that made it
cheaper than stealing them. John had died of a fever in the
Gobi without ever finding what he was looking for.

Old Ebenezer would not have liked John’s marriage to an
English actress and the divorce later would not in his eyes
bave improved matters, even though the reason for it was
only that John and his wife could not agree on a convenient
continent. Ebenezer would have thought it natural that
they had both been willing that Nicholas should take their

^6

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

boy and bring him up in Paul Revere Square. Where else
would a Joceleyn be brought up?

Mrs. Joceleyn’s return to Boston after she gave up the
theater would have seemed natural to Ebenezer too. Why
go anywhere else when you were there already? He would
have disliked her calling herself Mrs. Rowe Joceleyn, but
he would also have disapproved of his daughters’ refusal to
speak to her. Family quarrels were of course one of the
pleasures of life, but they ought to be carried on in private.

As far as Stephen was concerned, his dabbling in painting,
his elopement with Nicholas’s fiancee would most certainly
have meant disinheritance.

However, even if his family had chosen strange paths,
Ebenezer Joceleyn had accomplished his main purpose.
Joceleyn & Company flourished. In good years it poured
out a golden flood. Even in poor ones its wide bronze doors
under the pagoda canopy — with the elephants’ heads and
the dragons and the discreet touches of red lacquer and gold
— sucked in green and white paper and blew it out again
into the pockets of the Shatswells, the Keiths, and the
Lobanovs.

So Nicholas Joceleyn, who kept the paper fluttering, was
naturally of considerable interest to his sisters.

They generally did what he asked them to do. Bessie
Shatswell did it affectionately and vaguely; Anna Keith
with sour efficiency; Sophia Lobanov, gayly, casually,
flippantly, according to her mood of the moment. She had
developed a technique that enabled her to comply with the
request and also evade it.

So when he called Princess Lobanov she drawled into the
telephone in that English accent that she picked up in

FAMILY AFFAIRS

27

Russia: ‘No, Nicholas...! hadn’t the faintest ... Soddy,
veddy soddy . . . No, not soggy, not the weather. Soddy.
S-O-R-R-Y . . . But definitely, Nicholas . . . Quite . . . Really !
. . . Really ! . . . Poor Stephen’s daughter, and she looks like
Carol . . . But certainly I remember. Although, of course, he
was only our half-brother, and after the way he behaved to
you . . . Why, certainly I won’t mention it, dear Nicholas.
One isn’t more royalist than the King, is one.? But I do
think it’s very generous . . . Absolutely. I won’t mention it.
I’m dumb. Completely. Of course I’m listening . . . Two
weeks! She’s been here two weeks! And you’ve been ill all
that time ! I hadn’t the foggiest notion ... I heard you had
a cold, but I . . . Have you a nurse? . . . Only Burwell! I’d
rather be nursed by a gorgon. Definitely . . . Ask her here?
Why I’ih aching to see her. Aching. I’m at home Saturdas’^.
Tell her to drop in. About five. I’ll ask Bessie and Anna.
She might as well get the full blow at once . . . Bill? Peter?
Well I’ll try, but you know how they are about stray rela-
tives . . . Yes, I’m sure she’s lovely . . . Carol was like a
Romney and Ethel Barrymore. Tell her to forgive my not
calling. My back, you know . . . Good-bye, dear Nicholas.
Shall I send you some vodka? Serge always . . . You know
best, of course. I have a wonderful Russian osteopath, with
such temperament . . . Yes, of course you know best. Explain
to — what’s her name — Diana? . . . ’

Nicholas Joceleyn hung up without getting full details
about Princess Lobanov’s back. He hardly needed to be
informed that the Princess’s back prevented her doing what-
ever she did not want to do.

His own back ached and the blood beat hard in his ears.
He did not want to call his other two sisters, but he knew

28

PAUL REVERE SQUAR

they would be offended if he did not. At least Anna woulc
Bessie was too lazy to be offended. For a moment he though
wearily that he would leave Sophia to spread the news. Sh
could be trusted to do it.

He was quite right in his confidence in Sophia. She wa
already moving with a speed and determination praise
worthy in a sufferer from sacroiliac trouble.

Not being able to see into Sophia’s room, merely into he
mind, Nicholas Joceleyn picked up the telephone, called Mrs
Keith, went through his formula again.

Would Anna see that their niece met the young people ii
the Square.? He’d already spoken to Sophia.

‘Attractive.? Certainly she’s attractive. She looks like —
Carol,’ said Nicholas Joceleyn, the blood thumping loude
in his ears.

Mrs. Keith’s transports of rapture over the arrival of he
dead half-brother’s daughter were moderate. She was busy
as Nicholas must know, with the Community Drive, bu
naturally she would call on Diana as soon as possible. An(
she would tell Bessie, who, as a matter of fact, was playing
contract with her now. So if Nicholas would excuse her. H(
sounded very ill, she added encouragingly. And hoped h(
had a good tonic.

‘I have,’ said her brother, ringing off.

Nicholas Joceleyn’s ‘tonic’ came into his room. She hac
a silver tray in her hands. On the tray was a tall glass witl
eggnog still frothing at the rim. There was a plate of smal
sponge cakes, tender, fragrant, and with a sugary crust like
thin ice over soft snow.

They had known each other for a whole week now. The

FAMILY AFFAIRS

29

figure in the black dress that looked as if it were meant for
someone else was becoming as familiar as Burwell’s carefully
tailored pomposity.

To her imcle’s grumbled ‘Well, what have you been up
to?’ Diana said softly: ‘Having fun in the kitchen. Hannah
let me. She was nice. Daddy used to like these cakes, so I
thought you might. I hope it was all right to use the eggs.’

‘It was all right,’ Nicholas assured her.

It would have been hard, he thought, to mind anything
Diana did, especially now, with her cheeks very pink from
standing over the stove and flour on the tip of her short nose
that was so absurdly frivolous according to the Joceleyn
standard for noses, and her soft velvety -brown, gold-flecked
eyes looking down at you with that gaze, half-maternal,
half-shy.

‘Why didn’t your father tell me he was hard up?’ he
asked crossly, and then, more gently: ‘Oh, I suppose I
know. I mean, of course I know. Never mind.’

‘I do mind,’ she said. ‘And I know why. You’d always
looked out for him and he had hurt you. So he was angry
with you. Angry at first. Afterward it settled down into
being stiff-necked and proud. But at the last he wasn’t. I
thought you’d like to know. That’s why I came, partly.’

She moved across the room with her light step, drew the
crimson curtains across the tall windows, then turned to the
fireplace and, without fuss or clatter, made the sulking logs
flicker into flame.

‘What did he say? Tell me what Stephen said,’ Nicholas
Joceleyn asked.

She sat down where he could see her. She seemed to know
what to do in a sick-room. Sophia, for instance, would have

30

PAUL REVERE SQUARI

stood where he would have had to crick his neck to look uf
at her, or leaned on the mantelpiece endangering the precious
Ming yellow jars.

After a minute or two of silence Diana began to speak
softly.

‘It was the day before he died. I thought he was better.
It was pneumonia. His fever had been high and he didn t
always know me. He called me Carol — as you did the
other day. I knew it was my mother he was thinking of.
Then suddenly the fever was gone and he talked quietly,
sensibly. Wrote that note to you, asking you to look after
me. He could only just hold the pencil. He slept for a
while. When he woke he began to talk about you.

“‘We were a selfish lot,” he said, “but I was the only one
that ever did anything really rotten. Nicholas was engaged
to Carol. They were going to be married in a few weeks. I
came home for the wedding. From Rome where I’d been
studying. For my present to Nicholas I said I’d paint her
portrait. Well, we didn’t mean any harm. It just happened.
We seemed to belong to each other. Those long hours ...”
I can remember every word, I think,’ Diana said, ‘but
perhaps ’

‘Go on,’ said her uncle quietly.

‘He looked down at his hands and said, “These hands
won’t need washing with turpentine again. I’d like to see
that picture. It must be in the old house somewhere. I’m
glad I was a painter. I’d like to tell Nicholas that, but I
can’t write any more now. He gave me my chance. I wish
I’d done better with it. But I’ve had some good days. Do

you remember ” Then he began talking about places

he painted and how the light was on the snow in the early

FAMILY AFFAIRS

81

morniiig and on a field of tall timotliy in the summer wind.
And he reminded me how when Kreuger and Toll went to
smash and we didn’t have any money, he painted Sam Wil-
bur’s silo for him, not a picture. The silo. He said he thought
it was some of his best work. He did odd jobs of painting,
mostly inside, though, for the neighbors until he was ill.’

Nicholas Joceleyn muttered: ‘Kreuger and Toll. So that
was it. Was all his money in it?’

‘About all he had left. He’d lost a lot in 1929. And before
that he spent without counting much, I’m afraid. It was
fun when we traveled all over the world, but I think we were
happiest in the little red house. We had a bigger one at
first, but he had a chance to sell it. It was mortgaged, so we
didn’t get much from it, but we lived on it for a while.
“We’ll eat the dining-room mantelpiece tonight,” he’d say.
Sometimes he’d trade pictures for milk and things. Every
spring he used to get the job of varnishing the canoes up at
the camp.’

She stopped, thinking her uncle had said something, but
he had only made a sound that was either a cough or a sup-
pressed groan, and she went on: ‘We could always get rid
of pictures of people’s houses and of their cows. And the
workhorses. Or the whole family out on the porch in their
Sunday clothes. He used to get ten dollars apiece for them.
In trade. Not cash, of course. He thought he ought to get
twenty dollars for his big pictures like the one of the Chicken
Pie Supper and one called Money Musk. It’s a dance, you
know. They’re dancing it in the Grange Hall. I think it’s
good, but I suppose his pictures looked too much like what
they were pictures of to be art. Anyway, I wouldn’t sell
them at the auction unless they brought twenty dollars and
I — I didn’t get a single bid.’

S2

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Her uncle made that noise again that was perhaps a cough.

‘I wish you could have seen them. He always said you
had the most artistic sense of anyone in the family. He told
me about your Chinese things,’ Diana said.

‘He remembered them.!*’

‘He remembered everything. But mostly what he did —
running away the day before your wedding — that it was
cowardly. He said they were right to marry each other.
That their life together — short as it was — proved that.
But that he ought to have told you. Almost the last thing
he said was — that’s what I wanted to tell you really —
“He’d have understood. Nicholas was kind — always. I
ought not to have been afraid of him.” ’

Nicholas Joceleyn lay quiet, looking at her. The cabinet
of porcelain was like a tapestry of soft color behind her and
the firelight made a bright glow back of her bright head.
Her figure in the black dress was only a shadow, a little
darker than the other shadows.

She got up and picked up the silver tray. It cut a cold
white crescent out of the warm twilight. The silver glare
dazzled his eyes.

‘Yon rising moon that looks for us in vain,’ he began half
absently. His voice had lost its usual gruffness as he added,
‘I understand. I always understood.’

Then with his old abruptness he said: ‘We. won’t talk
about it. It’s hard for us both. Put that tray down. It
shines in my eyes. Tell me about yourself. I don’t know
anything. Are you engaged? ’

Diana laughed. It was a warm sound, a strange one in
that house.

Burwell, who was listening conscientiously on the stairs.

FAMILY AFFAIRS

33

shifted his weight and the tread creaked under his feet.
Even his gratitude for the cooking of the eggs had not
entirely lulled his suspicions. Diana had from Burwell’s
viewpoint several defects. She was a stranger. She was
young. She was a woman. A woman, probably, with de-
signs of some sort on his master. Burwell had spent a life-
time foiling feminine wiles for both himself and Mr. Joceleyn.
It was only a proper caution — not curiosity, of course —
that kept him on the draughty stairs in an attempt to see
what the young woman might be up to.

He thought with a stifled sigh of relief: ‘Even if she’s not
engaged, he can’t marry her. She’s his niece.’

He moved up a step in time to hear Diana say: ‘Engaged!
Why, Uncle Nicholas. I’ve hardly ever spoken to a young
man. You have no idea how scarce they are in East Alcott.
The competition is terrific. There are two eligible bachelors.
One runs the sawmill and the other’s the garageman, and I
can tell you they’re pretty careful never to speak to any
woman under fifty-three or over twelve. Besides,’ she added,
‘even if Daddy hadn’t greeted every youth for miles around
as if he were ready to run a pitchfork into him, I was always
too shy. I couldn’t compete with the other girls.’

Her uncle growled: ‘Nonsense. You’d knock the spots off
everyone within the twelve-mile limit.’

Diana picked up the tray again.

‘It’s pretty nice of you to think so, but we might as well
face facts. I’ve been an old maid since I was thirteen years
old.’

‘How old are you now?’

‘Twenty-one.’

‘Well you won’t be when you are twenty-two/ said
Nicholas Joceleyn firmly.

PEACHBLOW

Bxjrwell changed his posture from that of private detec-
tive to the impressive pose of a butler coming upstairs for a
tray. He had seen a film recently where a butler — all in
the interest of right and justice, of course — had done the
same thing. Burwell acquired a good many of his ideas from
the fiickers. He called them that because an English butler
of his (illuminated celluloid) acquaintance thus referred to a
great industry.

It must have been the same evening — allowing for the
difference in time between Shanghai and Boston — that
the gate of the house in the shabby street shut quietly
behind Nicholas Joceleyn II. Nick — no one called him
Nicholas — stopped for a moment behind it listening, but
there were no footsteps outside. The sullen booming of the
Japanese guns in the distance had become so familiar that
he hardly noticed it except as a background for the common-
place noises of the evening — the clink of dishes from the
kitchen, the barking of a dog somewhere down the road.

PEACHBLOW

35

He had all day had the sense of being followed. The
thick letter in his breast pocket — the letter with the money
in it, the order for the guns, the General’s scheme for getting
them delivered — had seemed to make his feet drag. Well,
he was free of it now. He had given it into the right hands.
With its delivery the sense of quiet footsteps padding a little
way behind had left him.

He went into the house, whistling softly and shifting the
box with the vase in it to his good hand. Because of that
sense of being followed and the feeling that his left hand must
be free, he had been carrying the box clumsily, uncomforta-
bly, imder his damaged right arm. The doctor had removed
the splints that day. The arm was still stiff and lame. He
was supposed to use it now, but he could see, as he put the
box down, that he would not be much use in a plane for a
while.

He went into the dark, bare bedroom, lay down on the
sagging mattress of the iron bed, and tried to forget his
aching arm. He had been lucky to escape from the crash
with no worse injury, but it was annoying not being able to
fly. He wanted to be back at something he did well. Not —
he thought with some satisfaction — that he’d done so badly
about the letter. Only it wasn’t his line — undercover work.
Buying tea was more familiar ground. He’d liked it really.
You couldn’t do very badly at it, if you were a Joceleyn.
The path was smoothed for you in so many ways, by century-
old friendships, by a tradition of honorable dealing, by —
a minor point, but not to be laughed at — the Joceleyn gift
of an accurate palate for the subtle flavor of Lapsang
Souchong.

But since there was at present no tea good enough for

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

Joceleyn & Company to be had, he might as well do some-
thing for China. Only his uncle, who had always hated his
flying — hated it not because it was dangerous, but because
it was hostile to Joceleyn & Company — would not see it
that way.

‘I can’t help it,’ he thought. ‘There are things more
important than tea-chests.’

The word tea-chest made his thought swing to the bundle
on the table. The vase, well wadded with crushed newspaper,
was packed into a tea-box. Ah Wong must find a stronger
one, big enough to hold the tea-box, and manage somehow
to send this peace offering to Uncle Nicholas.

He called Ah Wong, who took the tea-chest. There was a
box in the storeroom that would fit it, he said. The noise of
nails being yanked out and pounded flat was louder than the
sound of the guns across the river. Nick lay still and watched
the sky lighten before the rumble and roar drifted across.

Ah Wong stopped hammering; began to slam heavy kettles
around. He had a flexible and discontinuous pattern of
work. He would mop half the floor, wash half the dishes,
nail half a box, yet ultimately the floor would be clean, and
the peachblow vase would be packed.

It was a lucky accident, Nick thought, getting the peach-
blow.

It was because of that mistaken sense of being followed
that he had dodged into the little shop. There was nothing
on display to attract him particularly — a bronze or two,
a broken set of ivory chessmen, a stained coat of yellow silk,
heavily embroidered. Looking at it he had smiled at the
recollection of the young Chinese at Harvard who had in-
vited him to tea in his room. The walls were hung with

PEACHBLOW

37

B.V.D.’s and gaily striped shirts. There was a pair of
pajamas — red with a neat pattern of orange-and-green air-
planes — thrown carelessly over the radio. Suspenders
garnished the mantelpiece. Plaid suspenders.

‘To make you feel at home,’ their host had explained
kindly. ‘Just as it makes me feel in American houses to find
the piano so very attractively covered with Chinese under-
wear . . . ’

He was fighting somewhere now, this friendly, courteous,
and amusing young man. His brilliant eyes and sensitive
fingers would have told whether the peachblow vase was
genuine. Nick had to trust only to his instinctive liking for
it; to a feeling it gave him of repose and peace that freed him
for the moment from the sense of following footsteps.

The old shopkeeper had slid a thin, yellow hand into the
jar and had brought out a slip of paper which he spread out
before Nick’s eyes.

Someone had written on it in English.

‘Peachblow is the lover’s color. He who sees peachblow in
the dawn sees happiness.’

It was cheap, the old man said, naming a price.

Nick, still scowling over the scribbled words, shook his
head.

‘To be angry with one you love is a fishbone in the throat,’
the shopkeeper suggested helpfully. ‘The jar will be peace
offering. I make the price smaller.’

He spoke excellent English, rather like someone on the
‘March of Time’ program pretending to be Chinese.

‘But this,’ Nick told him, dropping the paper back into
the jar, ‘is a matter of friendship merely.’

He turned toward the door.

PAUL EEVEUE SQUARE

‘Love is a pearl, grasp it and it slips througli the fingers.
Friendship is a lump of jade; carve it as you will, it is yours
forever.’ The old man brought this sentiment out hurriedly
and added, ‘I make the price only one half. So perhaps the
peachblow is safe — not broken by guns.’

‘You’re not leaving the city?’ Nick asked. ‘Many people
are moving away.’

‘Where to go? Where to carry my goods? No, I am too
old. I stay where I have been so long. Perhaps bombs fall
somewhere else. Who knows? Take the peachblow. Sir.’

Nick took it without more bargaining. The back door of
the shop opened on another street. To reach it Nick walked
through a spicy-smelling twilight between half-seen shapes
of bronze and porcelain and hurried down a dark, curving
road. He had no fear of seeming to hurry now; no need to
stroll casually looking in the windows. The following foot-
steps no longer padded behind him, faster and slower with
his own. In the crowds of people trudging hopelessly, help-
lessly with their bags and bundles, one more man with a box
under his arm would not be noticed. The box, awkward as
it was for his lame arm, somehow made him seem natural,
at ease. It was normal in that weird twilight, stained with
flashes of glaring light, to be moving somewhere, carrying
something.

He had been tired when he got back to his house: the
bare, impersonal place that he never thought of as home.
His weariness was not chiefly physical, although his arm
ached more than usual. It was the moving crowds, the
stooped shoulders, the patient, bewildered faces that dis-
couraged and depressed him. He had done what he could,
what any one man could, against the force that was driving

PEACHBLOW

39

these people from their homes, but he had accomplished
nothing, nothing at all, he told himself. It did not matter
about the money that he had poured into the Chinese cause.
The fact that he had been only a short time ago a rich yoimg
man and was now a poor one — who had no business to buy
peachblow vases even at bargain prices — troubled him very
little.

Money had never meant much to him except that if you
were generous, it was convenient to be rich. He was glad
that he had given that money to his mother to set up her
business. There was nothing generous about turning it
over to her. His father ought to have left it to her, divorced
or not. Giving it to her was only decent. He liked her,
although he knew her so little. He couldn’t see why his
father couldn’t get on with her, except that his father had
not had a great deal of practice in getting on with anyone.

It was when he was tired that these thoughts began to
drift through Nick’s mind. The usual one followed: that he
had been lucky that his uncle had taken him in when he was
a boy. That led him back to the peachblow vase. He
hoped his uncle would like it. He had no peachblow that
Nick remembered.

He shut his eyes. Ah Wong had stopped washing dishes
now and was pounding again. The rhythm of the hammer
strokes and the sound of the guns became only a distant
drumming.

Nick fell into a doze that deepened into sleep. He did not
hear the door move behind him, nor the footsteps padding
up to his chair.

The gag was in his mouth before he could make a sound.
Even the twisting agony as he felt his arm break again left

40

PAUL REVEEE SQUARE

him silent. There were three of them. One held his feet
and one his arms while the other went through his pockets.
This one had cold hands. He used them swiftly. It was like
lying still while a yellow snake squirmed over you.

All the time Ah Wong went on hammering and singing.

Nick thought: ‘They’ll find I haven’t got it and go,’
then, ‘but they mustn’t. They’ll know then I’ve delivered
it.’

He tried to kick the man off his feet. If he could kick
him against the table, there would be a crash and Ah Wong
would come.

The dirty yellow fingers sunk themselves into his windpipe.
Then, as Nick still struggled and kicked, instead of the
clutch at his throat came the terrible searing pain in his eyes.

Perhaps the pain saved his life. It gave him strength to
kick the man into the table. Ah Wong came. One of the
last things Nick remembered seeing was Ah Wong with the
hammer in his hand.

CONFERENCE

On the afteenoon that Nicholas Joceleyn telephoned to
his sisters a pleasant example of family affection was given
by the speed with which Princess Lobanov got herself out of
her Fortuny tea-gown and into her black suit.

In the tea-gown the Princess aroused thoughts of the
Renaissance. Its subtle blending of terra-cotta and bronze
and dulled gold made her pallor, the narrow oval of her
face, her pale, greenish eyes and long Joceleyn nose with the
twist in the middle, the improvements she had made in her
Joceleyn eyebrows, the new shade of copper she was trying
on her hair all into something that fitted nicely into the
fifteenth century. Yet in the black suit with its short fur-
trimmed skirt — the Princess had enviable legs — its furred
military tunic with the frogged opening, the astrakhan hat
set slantwise on her coppery hair, she had a rakishly Cossack
look. In this costume she moved with a swagger. Her
slender feet seemed to carry her along to some swinging tune
of gaily broken rhythm and succulent minor chords. As she

4.2

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

hurried through the pelting, sleety rain along Paul Revere
Square and swung up the steps of Mrs. Keith’s house, she
looked gay and reckless. That is, if you happened to be
behind her. No one saw her face.

Whatever expression it had worn in the gray twilight of
the Square had, on her entrance to Mrs. Keith’s drawing-
room, been subdued to an ironical languor. A monocle
would not have been out of place in her left eye. She kept
one carefully arched eyebrow higher than the other and
the vividly slashed scarlet line of her lips was drawn slightly
to one side. This arrangement of features had the advantage
of deepening the dimple in her left cheek. Furthermore, it
gave her a slightly quizzical look that put the person on
whom it was turned on the defensive. People who talked to
the Princess often found themselves explaining things about
which she had asked them nothing at all.

Her sisters were still at the card-table when she was shown
in. The Princess leaned against the white marble mantel-
piece and smoked a cigarette in a long holder of green jade.
A large emerald glowed on her hand and there was a discreet
sparkle of diamonds at her wrist. She had a praiseworthy
ability to stand still. She never fidgeted, nor played with
bric-a-brac, nor fluttered the leaves of books. Except for
the slight motion of the hand that held the cigarette holder
and the faintly moving haze of blue smoke, she might
have been drawn in black against the white marble grapes
and the severe elegance of Mrs. Keith’s winter bouquets in
the alabaster jars.

Mrs. Keith did not approve of extravagance in flowers.

' When you can go right out on a dump and pick something
with real crispness and line,’ she often said, "why should

anvnTi#^ bnthpr witb crrp^i.t TTmcliv

CONFERENCE

43

In spite of Princess Lobanov’s admirable repose, tbe card-
players did not find her a restful companion. One of them
overbid her hand in a way quite foreign to her methodical
style of play. The rubber came to a sudden end with dark
looks interchanged between the lady with the purple bow
on the black hat and her sister with the black bow on the
purple hat. Neither of them seemed to enjoy her tea,
although it was Joceleyn & Company’s Gold Seal of fragrant
memory. Most of the bread and butter — Mrs. Keith con-
sidered cakes vulgar and was rich enough to act on that
theory — was left untouched. In an astonishingly brief
time the Joceleyn sisters were left alone.

Even then the Princess did not speak. She whistled a bar
or two of some irritatingly Russian air, tossed half a cigarette
into the chaste display of pleated paper and white birch logs
in Mrs. Keith’s memorial fireplace, and attacked the plate
of bread and butter with the absent-mindedness of one whose
glandular balance is perfect. Mrs. Shatswell, who spent
much of a not very mathematical intelligence in counting
calories, watched her sister with an expression as near
annoyance as her natural placidity permitted.

She declined the remaining fragment of bread on the
ground that she had to remember her weight. This should
not have been any especial effort for Mrs. Shatswell, but if
there had been a shaggy coconut cake, it would have been
impossible. Nature has two favorite pleasantries. One is to
blow people up so that they are caricatures of themselves.
The other is to dry them out till they rattle if shaken.
Neither trick is done with mirrors. Mrs. Shatswell had once
been the beauty of the three Joceleyn sisters, but that was
seventy-five pounds ago.

44

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Mrs. Keith had not even the happy recollection of having
been a beauty before undergoing the shriveling process.
She was an erect, parchment-faced woman with stiff gray
hair and sharp shoulder blades. Her Joceleyn nose had an
inquisitive twist. Her gray-green eyes peered sharply from
under drooping cr6pe-paper lids. Strangely enough there
was a certain likeness between her and the Princess, not that
either would have admitted it.

If Bessie Shatswell had ever had a Joceleyn nose, it had
vanished. No one feature stood out in the scrubbed and
polished pinkness of her face. What was left of her hair had
the whiteness that comes to hair once flaxen. In fact, in its
owner’s eyes it was still flaxen and its tendency to appear in
stray wisps was placidly accounted for by the owner on the
ground that it was naturally curly.

It was Mrs. Keith who finally broke the silence.

‘I suppose Nicholas telephoned you too,’ she said grimly.

‘I heard he hadn’t been well,’ the Princess said vaguely.

It is always pleasant to see a harmonious family group,
especially when even the youngest member has half a
century of experience of the others. Not that Princess
Lobanov admitted to a complete half-century. Lately she
had shown a tendency to forget the Spanish War. Her sisters
accepted this absent-mindedness, her extravagance, and her
picturesque treatment of dull facts, just as the Princess and
Mrs. Shatswell accepted Mrs. Keith’s carefulness about
string, electricity, and firewood. That is, they ignored it
with strangers and enjoyed a good talk about it with each
other. Mrs. Keith and the Princess naturally had often com-
mented to each other on dear Bessie’s laziness in letting her-
self be dominated by a conceited, greedy, bad-tempered

CONFERENCE

45

little half -pint of Mayflower vinegar — the expressions are
Princess Lobanov’s on one of her less English days — like
Bertram Shatswell.

The Princess and Mrs. Keith agreed that Bessie spoiled
her two boys; Mrs. Keith and Mrs. Shatswell agreed that
Sophia spoiled Peter Lobanov; but even the Princess and
Mrs. Shatswell did not pretend that Mrs. Keith had spoiled
her son Ebenezer. E. Joceleyn Keith, as he was beginning
to sign himself, was a model young man. His mother ad-
mitted it, yes, and even his aimts.

Not finding anything to say against Eben, as the family
still called him, his relatives generally laid a few wreaths on
the grave of his father, Clarence Keith, who had certainly
been a very tiresome person up to the time he stepped in
front of an automobile in 1924.

‘Anna caught all this string-saving from him,’ was the
Princess’s opinion. ‘The Joceleyns were never like that.
Bold men, all. Risk takers.’

The Princess had not expected her remark to be repeated
to Mrs. Keith. The Princess was an optimist who thought
her listener more discreet than herself. However, the cool-
ness caused by the rapid passage of this comment to Mrs.
Keith’s ears had had time to heal. All was harmonious
among the Joceleyn sisters that wintry afternoon.

It took little time and few words for them to agree that
the entertaining of their niece had better be done over the
week-end while Bill Shatswell could be depended on to be
away mooning over his horses and Eben Keith had gone
skiing. As for Peter Lobanov, he would be tramping around
his studio smeared with paint. He never came to his mother’s
parties unless she dragged him by the hair. Definitely. And

46

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

in the mean time they had better take turns sitting with dear
Nicholas, since with only Burwell to look after him he must
be having some dull days.

‘But he has Diana there now,’ said Mrs. Shatswell. Both
her sisters were patient with Bessie. Neither had shown any
annoyance when she had suggested that they could give a
dinner party soon for Diana when all the boys were at home.
Bessie had an impractical streak. Quixotic, really. If Bessie
got it into her head that anyone was being treated unkindly,
she became absolutely mulish. The way with Bessie was to
agree with her and rely on her laziness.

The Princess threw another cigarette into the fireplace.
This one ignited the paper frill, somewhat to Mrs. Keith’s
annoyance. However, she controlled it until her Cossack
relative had swung her crimson-lined black cape over her
military raiment and whistled her way out into the Square.

Then and only then did Mrs. Keith pick up the silver tea-
kettle and drench the burning paper. She was just in time.
In another second the birch logs would have caught.

DRESS MAKES A DIFFERENCE

It proved impossible for Nicholas Joceleyn’s sisters to carry
out their pious intentions about sitting with him during his
convalescence. When Mrs. Shatswell called, she was in-
formed by Burwell that Mr. Joceleyn had gone to his office.
Mrs. Shatswell, whose mind worked best when it contained
only one idea, turned away without asking any questions.
She had promised Sophia and Anna to go and sit with Nich-
olas. She had even brought a large purple bag with mustard-
colored flowers on it containing her petit point, but as
Nicholas had recovered, she could go home and work there
much more comfortably. She was making a fire screen for
Bill. It had a hunting scene on it and it was hard enough
work to get the horses shaded correctly even at home with-
out anyone distracting her with conversation.

In her anxiety to get back to her screen, Mrs. Shatswell
forgot to ask for her niece. If she had, she would have
learned that Diana had gone out with her uncle, but even
that alarming piece of intelligence would probably not have

48

PAUL KEVERE SQUARE

worried Mrs. Shatswell, She combined dull browns and
greens and spots of scarlet, feeling placidly glad that Nicholas
was better. In the tense mental state induced by getting the
largest bay horse so that he looked like a horse at all, she
had little energy left to think about what might happen if
Nicholas were influenced by ‘that girl.’ As a plotter Mrs.
Shatswell was hopeless.

Mrs. Keith was more efficient. On being told by Burwell
that Mr. Joceleyn had gone out, she asked crisply for Miss
Joceleyn.

Miss Joceleyn had gone out too, Burwell said in his
frostiest manner. He started to shut the door. Mrs. Keith
did not exactly put her foot in it, but she stopped its closing
by saying: ‘I’m surprised you let him be so imprudent,
Burwell.’

Burwell said coldly: ‘We consulted the doctor. Madam.’

‘What did he say?’

‘His conversation was with Mr. Joceleyn, Madam. After
Doctor Lomond called, Mr. Joceleyn informed me that he
would dress and go out.’

Burwell might have amplified this statement. Doctor
Lomond, who was a gentleman of loud and violent speech,
had said in tones easily audible in the front hall that if
Nicholas wanted to be a — qualified — nincompoop, no one
could stop him. So if he was going to worry about that —
decorated — tea business, he might as well get up and see to
it. Though why in the name of — this and that and the other
— Nicholas couldn’t get some of his — profusely ornamented
— nephews to do something about it was pretty — heavily em-
broidered — queer! Suppose they couldn’t get some special
brand of dried-up twigs. ‘Let ’em drmk champagne,’ con-

DRESS MAKES A DIFFERENCE

eluded Doctor Lomond helpfully, putting away his stetho-
scope and jamming his thick form into a frow2y coonskin
coat.

‘Your pump’s running better,’ he added from the door,
‘but don’t go losing your temper or I won’t answer for it.
What you need is to keep calm,’ he roared from the stairs.
And had rushed past Burwell and slammed the door behind
him before Burwell could get to it.

Mrs. Keith still kept her place on the steps.

‘Letting that draught in on me,’ Burwell thought bitterly
behind his weary mask of old-world courtesy.

‘When will he be in.?’ Mrs. Keith asked.

‘I really couldn’t say. Madam. He and Miss Joceleyn are
limching at the Ritz.’

Mrs. Keith’s heels clicked hard down the front steps.

Burwell shut out the offensive stream of fresh air.

‘Guess that jarred the old weasel’s spinal cord,’ Burwell
remarked to himself.

‘What did you say, Mr. Burwell.?’ inquired a voice from
above.

Burwell hastily became the perfect butler.

‘I said, Minna, that you’d better give Mr. Joceleyn’s
room a thorough cleaning while opportunity affords,’ he
said untruthfully and imperturbably. ‘But don’t go dusting
our porcelains because Miss Diana’s already done it and is
to have charge from now on.’

‘You and your “Miss Diana!”’ Minna observed.

She intended scorn of a soft attitude toward the intruder,
but she could not keep a certain note of tolerance out of her
voice. Since the day of the fried eggs, the prejudice against
the interloper had faded rapidly. The meals had suffered a

50

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

sea-cliange into something rich and strange. It happened so
suddenly that one evening that week Diana, trusting in the
customary tepidness of the soup, had actually burned her
tongue. Chops were wreathed in parsley where only chips
of mutton had lurked before. Pastry began to appear in
tender flakes instead of in one cohesive sheet like well-sea-
soned leather. Peas ceased to be suitable for ammunition.
String beans lost their close resemblance to string — old
gray and brown string cooked with lots of water. String
beans and baked potatoes are, after all, the test of cookery
— a test that Hannah had no difficulty in passing.

There is no real mystery about the strange alteration in the
cooking at Nicholas Joceleyn’s. Like all artists, Hannah
needed inspiration. Without it she retired to her bedroom
and left the kitchen in the hands of the kitchenmaid. After
eating one of Diana’s sponge cakes Hannah decided that
here was a foe-woman worthy of her eggbeater. She grum-
bled, of course, but she cooked.

Minna, panting after the exertion of climbing eight steps,
said: Tt seems our loving sisters are taking quite an interest
in us all of a sudden.’ She paused, polished what may very
possibly have been a fingerprint from the stair rail, and
added: ‘We’ll be having her Pretty Nearly Royal Highness
next!’

‘The Princess has asked Miss Diana to tea on Saturday,’
Burwell confided, but in a reproving tone that absolved him
in his own mind from the charge of gossip.

‘Oh, Mr. Burwell, and her without a thing fit to wear!
It’s throwing her to the lions, that’s what it is.’

‘She looks better in her old black dress than these debs
that’ve got their pictures on the paper so far this season,’

DRESS MAKES A DIFFERENCE

51

asserted Burwell, that earnest student of the society columns.

‘That’s the man of it,’ panted Minna, attending to a speck
of dust four steps farther up. ‘It’s not how she looks. It’s
how she feels.’

Burwell said belligerently: ‘It’s Mrs. Keith’s fourth winter
on that brown coat to my certain knowledge.’

‘That’s diflFerent,’ puflPed Minna wisely. ‘She’s so rich
she can wear what she likes. People like Miss Diana and
me has got to look our best.’

Minna need not have worried. At that very moment in a
gray and chromium shop — with a name as well as a decora-
tive scheme that he heartily resented — Nicholas Joceleyn
was paying for Diana’s new clothes. He had chosen the shop
because he knew from Princess Lobanov’s endearing habit of
going abroad suddenly and leaving him to settle her bills —
‘Hate to bother you, dear Nicholas, before this month’s
income is due, but I must take the Normandie, Definitely’
— that the Princess bought things there, when she was not
buying things in New York or Paris, and that it was very
expensive.

He was handing over a thick sheaf of new ten- and twenty-
dollar bills. The elegant gentleman with the marcelled hair
accepted them in a shocked manner.

He would be glad to arrange credit, he said, fingering the
bills with the tips of fingers like cold macaroni, as if there
were something disreputable about a cash transaction.

Diana and her uncle were quite unconscious that the
elegant gentleman was deciding that these customers weren’t
‘quite out of the top drawer.’ It was a phrase he had heard
from a New York buyer who had met someone who had a
cousin who knew Noel Coward

52

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Nicliolas Joceleyn was thinking: ^ There, that^s done and
there won’t be any bills for Anna to nose over — in case . . /

Diana was hardly thinking at all. She got into the big
car that her uncle had hired — he never had owned a car;
it was cheaper to hire, he said — and surveyed the pile of
silver and violet-striped boxes at her feet as if they might
melt away.

She was wearing the fawn-colored dress that had nothing
at all on it, but was draped as beautifully as if it were on the
Winged Victory.

‘I hate black. Except velvet,’ Nicholas had said. 'Don’t
believe your father would have wanted you to wear it.’

Diana admitted that Stephen had hated mourning.

It was only, she explained, that her neighbor, Mrs. Wilbur,
had given her the two black dresses and the coat. Made
them over for her out of her own clothes. There hadn’t been
any money for clothes lately. And Bertha Wilbur had said
that anyone looked all right in black as long as she wore
plenty of clean white collars and cuffs . . .

There was a black velvet dress in the bottom box. It was
for evening and had sleeves of white fur. There was a tweed
suit that looked like violets seen through a morning mist and
that smelled like smoke and burned toast. There was the
white dress that seemed to be made out of a little moonlight
and a few dewdrops and the coat of scarlet velvet to wear
over it. He would have bought her a fur coat, but she knew
they were expensive, so she wouldn’t let him. She’d like a
cloth coat, she said. So now she had one and had it on:
softest camel’s-hair with a beaver collar. No one had men-
tioned anything so vulgar as prices.

She could hardly remember what was in all the boxes.

DRESS MAKES A DIFFERENCE

53

Oil, yes — sweaters and skirts to match them, and stockings,
more stockings than she had ever seen before in one box.
Her uncle had pushed a hundred dollars into her hand and
told her to go and make hay among the lingerie while he
rested.

She couldn’t make herself spend it all. She and her
father would have lived for half a year on it, she told him
gravely.

‘Keep the change then,’ he said gruffly. ‘You may think
of something we’ve forgotten.’

Really he had forgotten nothing. There were the hats,
ridiculous hats, designed, he said, apparently by imbeciles
for morons. But then that was always so, he supposed.
Only when he saw Diana in the brown velvet one, he re-
canted and said they were designed by gnomes for elves or
hamadryads or something.

The fitter was less fantastic.

‘You wear it well, dearie,’ she said. ‘I’m Mrs. Plumber.
Don’t forget me. Just think of the kitchen sink.’

Mrs. Plumber was a pleasant oasis in the gray and
chromium desert of elegance. She was a woman of power.
The marcelled young man deferred to her. The Wellesley
graduates in the Brooks sweaters and discreetly small
strings of pearls and hand-loomed tweeds jumped when she
spoke. The hat genius and the shoe expert and the artist
in bags and the coat specialist all crowded into the fitting-
room and made approving noises.

Mrs. Plumber turned Diana around twice, pinched up a
sixteenth of an inch of material and said, ‘One loose tack
and it will be perfect.’

Everything was perfect to Diana. She went to lunch at

54

PAUL EEVEBE SQUARE

the Ritz in the fawn dress and the camel’s-hair coat and the
hamadryad’s hat. She carried the suede bag that matched
her shoes. It had twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents in it.
And a mirror that showed her a stylish stranger.

It was hard for Diana to believe any of it.

Just before they went to lunch, Mr. Joceleyn had stopped
at a small shop, asking Diana to wait for him a minute. It
was a long minute during which she tried to pretend that
she was in the habit of sitting in limousines. She noticed
the faces in the other limousines that passed her and tried
to look as bored. It was not much of a success.

When her uncle came out, he had a cherry-colored box
tooled with gold in his hand.

‘I’ve been looking over the young ladies and it seems
they’d catch cold if they didn’t have something like this
around their necks. So I got this for you, Carol. Change it
if you don’t like it.’

It was a string of small pearls, shining, faintly flushed with
rose.

‘Not very big, but none of this Japanese stuff. Sneaking
up on innocent oysters and irritating them. They’d irritate
more than oysters,’ he growled.

He went on grumbling about the Japanese until Diana
had recovered enough from the tears that somehow insisted
on trickling down her nose to thank him. It was only partly
his calling her Carol that made her cry. It was his voice,
eager under the gruffness; his look, weary, yet happy, like
that of a small boy coming home from the circus.

She mopped up the tears with one of her new handker-
chiefs and kissed him suddenly, greatly to the surprise of
two members of the Colonial Dames and much to the pleas-

DRESS MAKES A DIFFERENCE

55

ure of a policeman, the doorman at the Ritz, and Mr.
Joceleyn.

^No one ever kissed me in a car before/ he announced,
straightening his hat. ‘I like it. Makes me feel modern.'

‘I never kissed anyone in a car before,’ said Diana.

TOTAL ECLIPSE

That day always stood out afterward. After lunch her
uncle took her to Joceleyn & Company and sent her over the
big building with a beautiful young man with a brown-and-
pink face and a brown tweed suit with flecks of orange and
green in it, and a small gold football on his watchchain. He
looked as if he ought to be outdoors, but he seemed quite
happy inside showing her how tea was blended and packed
into the tin boxes and how the smallest and tenderest leaves
went into the ones with the gold seal. Diana was charmed by
the cleverness of the machines that tied tea into little bags,
but the young man — his name was Griffin — told her that
she had better not mention them to her uncle.

‘He thinks it’s immoral for people to use tea-bags. Selling
them boiled cotton, he calls it. The mouse in the tea-cup is
another of his — er — pet names for a tea-bag. Eben Keith
had a fine young fight to get them put m,’ said Mr. Griffin.

‘I thought perhaps I’d see Mr. Keith.’

‘He’d have been the lucky stiff to show you around, be-

TOTAL ECLIPSE

67

cause he’s in charge of the machines. But there’s a very
superior brand of snow in Tuckerman’s Ravine.’

“^There’s snow on Mount Mansfield too,’ Diana said, and
then they stopped talking about tea and talked about skiing.
Mr. Griffin was trying a new foundation wax. Quickest dry-
ing yet. You could put on four coats in no time at all.

‘How about going out and breaking a leg or two with me.?
I can get off tomorrow morning,’ he said, but Diana said she
had no ski things with her.

She smiled as she said it and the dimple stirred in her
cheek. She happened to be thinking of the disreputable
mackinaw that she had left in East Alcott for moth bait.
She was quite unprepared for the effect produced by the
dimple.

Within five minutes Mr. Griffin had thought up six differ-
ent ways of equipping her for every emergency in a skier’s
life. They could borrow his sister’s things. Or his other
sister’s. Or his cousin’s. They could rent skis. Or steal them.
Just wait till a banana wagon came along and help them-
selves. It would be a Good Act. Possibly saving the neck of
some innocent child.

‘I’ll — ril lend you my parka,’ said the young man in a
burst of generosity. Sir Walter Raleigh he felt like. Prac-
tically.

A lovely brunette in a blue satin blouse with crystal but-
tons said severely, ‘Mr. Griffin,’ and the beautiful young
man spun around.

‘You have to sign those letters before the office closes,'
said the lovely brunette coldly without rerhoving her gum.
‘And Mr. Joceleyn wants to see Miss Joceleyn.’

Mr. Griffin said it was no wonder . . .

There was a thin gray man in Nicholas Joceleyn’s office.
He looked sti£F among the teakwood and the paintings on
silk and the Khang Hsi jars. He was folding papers. The
papers crackled under his thin fingers. He snapped an elastic
around the bundle, dropped it into a green bag, and jerked
the string tight.

Nicholas Joceleyn said, ‘Diana, this is Mr. Clifton,’ and
the man looked at her sharply out of narrow gray eyes, and
gave his head a short jerk.

He said, ‘D’you do, ’s Joceleyn,’ crisply and his mouth
stretched a little like a rubber band and snapped back again.

Diana decided it was a smile, so she smiled too and Mr.
Clifton jerked his head toward Nicholas Joceleyn and
snapped: ‘I imderstand, Nicholas. Completely.’

There was a Buddha, carved of wood and gilded, in the
corner behind Nicholas Joceleyn’s desk. Both the Buddha
and Nicholas Joceleyn seemed to be watching Mr. Clifton
with a half smile on their lips. They both seemed to have
plenty of time, but Mr. Clifton jerked on his gray coat, and
yanked on his gray gloves, and slapped on his gray hat like
— as Bertha Wilbur would say — ‘ a cat lickin’ up chain
lightnin’.’

T’ll have them ready for you to sign Monday. Be here —
or at your house — at two o’clock.’

‘At my house, thank you, Follingsby,’ Mr. Joceleyn said
gently as Mr. Clifton jerked at his hatbrim, snatched up the
bulging green bag, and hurried out with his knee joints
cracking.

Mr. Joceleyn and the Buddha continued to look benevo-
lent and half amused. The Buddha looked tireless. Nicholas
Joceleyn was pale and there was weariness in his deep-set
gray eyes.

TOTAL ECLIPSE

59

He looked better after his secretary brought tea in thin
rice-patterned cups. He took a long breath of the pungent
steam, murmured, ‘Ah — the Caravan, that’s right. Thank
you,’ and sipped it absently. He sent for a second cup while
Diana was still waiting for hers to cool. He did not speak,
and she sat looking about the office, enjoying the subtle
curves of wood and porcelain, the texture of the plum-colored
rug, the crisp delicacy of painted silk, and the dark luster of
bronze. Except for the telephone on the desk everything in
the room was Chinese. Even her uncle seemed to have some-
thing Chinese about him this afternoon. His placidity as he
sat with the thin cup warming his cold fingers gave him for
the moment the air of some ancient scholar. At any moment
he might break the silence with some old piece of wisdom:
‘It is written — true words are not fine; fine words are not
true,’ or, ‘This humble and unworthy person regrets to say
that a lie has no legs, but the wind can blow it faster than the
steeds of truth can gallop after it.’ -

Of course he wouldn’t say that. And anyway it wasn’t
Chinese at all; it was only another of Bertha Wilbur’s East
Alcott sayings put into fancy language. She thought again of
Mr. Griffin and his ski-mania. It was her new clothes, of
course, that made him want to take her skiing. If he could
have seen her in that mackinaw! . . .

Her uncle was still silent. Diana got up and moved around
the room, studying the tiny figures on the painted silk. There
was, she discovered, something else in the room besides
Uncle Nicholas and the telephone that wasn’t Chinese. It
was lying on a table among some pieces of carved jade; a
shabby photograph frame of red leather. The picture in it
had been torn out of a newspaper. He was looking at some-

60

PAUL REVERE SQUAB

thing outside the picture with an expression of quiet amus'
ment. The photographer had caught him evidently when 1
wasn’t looking. There was a relaxed casualness about h
whole figure — the rumpled dark hair, the unshaven chii
the soldier’s coat fastened crookedly over one folded arn
One sleeve hung empty and his strong throat rose out of a
imbuttoned collar.

It was not the sight of the injured arm that made Dian
draw in her breath sharply.

Her uncle heard the sound — it was scarcely a gasp — an
said, ‘That’s my nephew. I happened to come across it i
the drawer when I was looking for my — for some papers
I’ll put it back.’

He put out his hand, but she held the picture for a moment
studying it. Then she handed it back and Nicholas Joceleyj
shoved the frame face down into a drawer.

‘He’s training Chinese aviators,’ he said, ‘when he ough
to be buying tea. Broke his arm bailing out, as he calls it, o
some dime-a-dozen plane when its wing dropped off, or i
exploded, or the motor fell out, or whatever it is happens t<
these things he flies in. They make ’em,’ Nicholas Joceleyi
said crossly, ‘out of Model T Fords and old umbrellas anc
feather dusters. He’s the most infernal nuisance.’

He might be, Diana thought, an infernal nuisance and fal
off feather dusters, but her uncle had said ‘my nephew’ with
out remembering apparently that he had four others. Bu1
that did not seem strange to her because she had seen this
one.

Her uncle went back to his writing. There was time in that
silence, broken only by small noises of pen and paper, tc
think about the day of the eclipse.

TOTAL ECLIPSE

61

How old was she? Thirteen perhaps. Her hair still hung in
heavy braids over her shoulders, but she was as tall as she
was ever going to be. Her faded blue dungarees hardly
reached her thin ankles. The dark cuffs of the striped Rowe
blouse were unfastened and hung nearer to her sharp elbows
than to her wrists.

Afterward she looked in the glass. It was the first time she
had ever cared how she looked. She might have twisted her
hair around her head,, she had thought. That would have
made her seem older. But still there would have been the
blackberry stains on her old blouse, the shrunken dungarees,
the freckles across her short nose, her skinny arms, the
smoked glasses.

Of course everyone wore smoked glasses that day. His own
goggles were smoked. She took off her own for a minute. She
wished he would push his up on his helmet, but he never did.

The shadow had already bitten into the sun so that it
looked like a broken saucer, when they heard the plane. She
and her father were watching for it on the fiat-topped hill
above the house.

Her Uncle John had come the week before and looked over
the field. It was a possible landing-place, he said. If it were
cloudy farther east, he might come. Nick would fiy the
plane, he said. And the field wasn’t bad. Really not bad at
all. They’d landed in much worse places in China.

The field had been mowed and the clover was coming up
through the stubble. Already now there was something
strange in the quality of the light that seemed to suck the
color out of the vivid green and purple of the clover.

‘Do you think Uncle John will come?’ she asked her
father.

62

PAUL EEVERE SQUAI

Stephen Joceleyn was sitting on the stone wall at the tc
of the field. He was eating the blackberries she had pickt
for him.

‘I hardly think so,’ he said. ‘More likely he’ll go farth«
east. He only said “possibly,” you know. Still it seems clean
here. There’s quite a cloudbank east of us.’

He picked up his notebook and began to write in it, puttin
down those things that looked like algebra and that wei
really his way of recording color values.

Then she heard the plane. First it was only like wind or
train a long way off. Then it was like a drill for blasting, bn
still off in the clouds. Then it shot out of them, circled wit
the noise of a sawmill when the saw strikes a knot. Th
roaring ceased. It bumped across the rough ground an
stopped only a hundred yards away.

The big man who got out was her Uncle J ohn, and the thi
one must be his son, Nick. Her uncle was like her fathei
only heavier, older, with a white mustache. He hardly looke
at her. His attention was all on his camera, his compass, hi
watch, and on a thing like a small telescope that he kep
holding up toward the light. He was the way her father wa
when he was painting — not indifferent exactly, but livinj
in another world.

He threw his helmet on the ground, but Nick kept his on
He was like a Roman soldier in her Latin book, Dian;
thought. He moved quickly, quietly, as he helped to set uj
the camera. He had to hurry because the light was fading sc
fast, but he had time to smile at Diana and to give her j
chocolate bar that he pulled out of his pocket.

‘We’re going to do it, Nick,’ John Joceleyn said to his son
‘I believe we’ve escaped the clouds. It’s thick over Newport

TOTAL ECLIPSE

63

Won’t be long now. If that cloud to the south doesn’t move
too fast. Listen to the birds.’

In the woods to the left the crows were quarreling about
whether it was time to go to bed. The thrushes were already
singing their evening chorus. A charm of goldfinches left the
thistles in the pasture over the wall and settled in an old
apple tree with nervous whistlings. Even a hummingbird
stopped pretending it was a miniature airplane and sat
quietly in a chokecherry tree among the other rubies and
emeralds.

‘Cows going home,’ Stephen Joceleyn said.

They could hear the slow, broken beat of a bell, the swish
of evergreens along the cowpath, and the pounding hoofs.

‘I’m going up, sir,’ Nick Joceleyn said to his father, and
then to Diana; ‘Want to come, sailor.? Join the air force?
See our solar system?’

She could say only, ‘Oh — oh. Daddy,’ but her father
said; ‘Sorry, Nick. No insult, but I’m a back number that
loves the ground for my favorite relatives. We’ll see all
right, Diana.’

‘If that cloud ’ John Joceleyn groaned.

‘Come up with me. Father. You’ll be sure of seeing it,’
Nick said. He was in the plane, leaning out.

‘We’ve been into that, Nick. Too much vibration. No
chance at all of my picture. Here I’ve at least something
solid to stand on. It’s a color plate I want,’ he said to
Stephen. ‘Long exposure.’

Then the mechanic spun the propeller and in a moment
the plane was only a droning above the clouds.

The crows were quiet now.

‘It’s coming,’ John Joceleyn said. ‘The shadow bands . . . ’

64

PAUL REVERE SQUA

He bent over the hood of his camera.

They could see the dark bands quiver across the dul
green of the field. Then that cloud to the south — it v
only a small one — drifted across the sun.

'So that's that/ said her uncle quietly.

They sat in the gathering twilight, feeling, rather th
seeing, the black shadow rush over them. Diana shivered
the cold wind that followed it. Her father picked up his c
sweater and wrapped it around her. The minute of darkn(
seemed hours. The tinkle of the cowbell had stopped. S
remembered the cows standing, pale shapes, in the barnyai
Even the pulsing beat of the crickets stopped briefly. T
silence seemed as actual a thing as the dark.

Then suddenly it was broken. A cock crowed defiantl
sharply. From the woods the crows seemed to explod
screaming and cawing. The cloud drifted away showing t]
thread of fire along the edge of the blackened sun. From t]
east came the distant voice of the plane, and before long Ni(
Joceleyn zoomed down out of the clouds again.

‘Yes, I saw it,' was all he had to say about the eclipse.

He spoke gently, vaguely, as if he were still a long way c
in the sky with the pearly light of the corona flashing arour
him, but he was quick and efficient with the camera. T<
quick, Diana thought.

From the time the plane first came to the moment when
rose for the second time with the clover blossoms bendir
before the hurricane of its wings was hardly an hour.

'I’ll come back, sailor, and take you up some day. Kidns
you when the stern parent isn't looking,' Nick had said.

But he never came. Sometimes a plane would go over Eai
Alcott. It never circled and dropped in the green field. Afb
a while she had stopped listening for it . . .

EXCLUSIVE ENTERTAINMENT

Nicholas Joceleyn did not go to Princess Lobanov’s tea
on Saturday. He was going to work with Clifton that after-
noon, he told Diana. He would have his tea at the office.
Perhaps his dinner too. It might be late in the evening before
he had finished. Besides, teas were not in his line. The
trouble with teas was the tea. Lately it was often coffee, a
beverage Mr. Joceleyn regarded with suspicion.

‘And Sophia puts her tea in a samovar,’ he said darkly.
‘I’d rather drink cuttlefish ink,’

‘Do you think you ought to work so late? Doctor Lo-
mond ’

‘Lomond’s an idiot. Besides, I’ll rest all he likes, after
Monday.’

At twenty minutes before five on Saturday Diana started
for Princess Lobanov’s alone. She had dressed too early and
she spent ten minutes looking out into the Square and feeling
chilly. This would not have been a cold day in East Alcott,
Kilt, there was a raw breeze off the river that sent chilly

66

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

draughts through the cracks around the windows. The wind
came out of tattered inky-gray clouds that hung close to the
gray river. There was a streak of dull yellow where the sun
had set, and the lights from the bridges spangled the twi-
light with pale gold. They were pretty, but somehow they
were less heartening than the white glow of Bertha Wilbur’s
Aladdin lamp shining across the bleak, snow-covered orchard.

Bertha’s lamp never smoked. Diana remembered how
Bertha had described one of the less eligible members of East
Alcott society as ‘the sort that would turn an Aladdin right
up and go away and leave it.’

Diana wished she could tell Bertha how scared she was.
If she could tell someone, she thought, it would be easier to
start across the Square. AlS there was no one to tell, except
Burwell, who would certainly disapprove of such faint-
heartedness, she consoled herself with one of Bertha’s aphor-
isms: ‘Don’t tell your troubles to anyone. Half the world
doesn’t give a damn and the other half’s damned glad of it.’

With this somewhat cold comfort Diana set out for her
Aunt Sophia’s white-columned doorway. She walked slowly,
the confidence given by her new clothes dwindling with each
step.

She thought, shivering in the bitter wind: ‘Women don’t
like other women to look stylish. They might like me better
in my old clothes.’

She hesitated; almost turned back, but shrugged off the
idea. Burwell had let her out with a glance very like ap-
proval. Suppose he met her sneaking out in her East Alcott
clothes ! It would be worse than meeting a whole zoo full of
aunts.

She wished she could see some signs of a party at Number

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67

28 . The house was austerely quiet. Its Venetian blinds
looked blankly at intruders, the silver doorknob gleamed
frostily against the cold expanse of white door. The Noah’s
Ark trees guarded it stiffly. The wrought-iron railings looked
hard and uncompromising.

Tf I could only see someone going in,’ Diana thought,
walking more and more slowly.

It was just then that Peter Lobanov blew around the
corner. His hat blew around it first and he followed it nui'
ning lightly in spite of an easel under one arm, a picture under
the other, and sundry squashy-looking boxes clasped in front
of him.

The top one fell off as he reached Diana, who caught it
neatly and then picked the hat out of the gutter. It had not
suffered. It was that kind of hat.

Prince Peter Lobanov’s first words to his cousin were:
^ Great snakes, don’t drop the hors d’oeuvres ! ’

'I don’t drop hors d’oeuvres,’ Diana said severely. "Would
you like your hat?’

"Jam it on my head,’ Peter said, thrusting it forward.

He had a lot of fluffy, dusty-colored hair sticking up all
over his head and a pale face with large, greenish-yellow eyes
set wide apart. His face started to be square, but gave it up
at his cheek bones and sloped sharply to a pointed chin. His
mouth seemed to have rather too many teeth in it, but they
were white and he had a nice smile.

He looked, Diana decided, rather like a kitten: an inno-
cent, mischievous, and absent-minded kitten.

She put the hat on his head and stacked the box on the
others that he was still holding against his chest.

"Now if you would just add to your favors by ringing that
bell ’

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He jerked his head toward Number 28 , not at the austere
front door, but at a dark green one below and to the right
marked ‘Service Entrance.’ Diana rang the bell. Then she
ran quickly up the three steps and even more quickly up the
other steps above them that led to the white door.

For a moment Peter Lobanov stood with his mouth open
looking up at her. Then his dejected hat, his wrinkled trench
coat, the easel and the picture of a cow eating a corsage of
gardenias, and the five squashy boxes all disappeared.

The big door above swung open.

Diana’s voice felt very small, but the red-headed giant in
pale blue with silver buttons heard it. He led her down a
mile or two of black-and-white marble. She tried to step in
the squares, not on the lines. Her new heels clicked loudly
in her ears.

The giant took away her new coat and hid it with the air
of a conspirator concealing a family skeleton.

Then he said, ‘Miss Diana Joceleyn,’ at a high silver door
and left her to her fate.

There are various ways by which a hostess can make a
guest feel uncomfortable. Princess Lobanov was mistress of
several methods of different degrees of subtlety, but she pre-
ferred the simplest: so she wore her hat.

She also employed the dictator technique of standing at
the end of a long room and letting the stranger do the walk-
ing. Diana made her way across a desert of silvery carpet.
She was conscious of the frozen beauty of the room — its
chairs of silver-and-white leather, its gleams of crystal and
onyx, its icily translucent hangings, and of the mirrors that
seemed to make the frosty room frostier. There was a fire in

EXCLUSIVE ENTERTAINMENT

a cavern of black onyx and silver, but it burned with cold
blue-and-green flames. Above it was a picture of an endless
forest of blue trees with snow on them.

For the first half-mile or so Diana’s knees almost betrayed
her. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, she was angry. When
Diana was angry the shell pink of her cheeks deepened and
her gold-flecked brown eyes darkened. Her golden head in
the hamadryad’s hat lost its pose that meant sweetness and
eagerness to please. Without any marked change of carriage
it became as haughty and indifferent as the figurehead of a
clipper ship.

The three figures dark against the crisp striping of the
Venetian blinds ceased to seem menacing to Diana. They
were only a thin old woman with a pompadour holding up a
funny hat, a stout lady comfortably upholstered in red vel-
vet — an engagingly cheerful note in the Snow Queen’s
Winter Palace — and a tall woman whose tailored tweeds
and coppery hair looked too young for her face.

The Princess found herself moving forward several steps.
This had not been part of her plan, but perhaps she was un-
settled by the ideas that were clashing behind her neatly
lifted face. They were as follows: ‘Worse than I thought.
She’s pretty ! Lucky I told Peter to go in the Service door and
not to come to tea. It would never do — or would it? If

Nicholas leaves her money But he mustn’t. We must

get her away before . . . The clothes — saw that model at
Maurice’s . . . Schiaparelli . . . Nicholas must have ... no fool
like an old fool . . . wish I’d worn my Fortuny ... a wolf in
Schiaparelli’s clothing!’ concluded the Princess, noting the
phrase as one that might be useful sometime in the right
company.

70

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

Ste stepped forward enclosing Diana’s hand in an icy,
bony clasp.

Mrs. Keith’s greeting was if anything farther below zero,
but Mrs. Shatswell actually lumbered off her Egyptian
throne and beamed upon her niece.

Diana smiled, and her eyes turned golden again.

She said shyly: ‘It’s Aunt Bessie, isn’t it?’

Mrs. Shatswell said heartily; ‘Of course it is and I’m so
sorry Bill couldn’t come.’

She meant it, too, poor simple soul. Bessie Shatswell
never had any head for arithmetic. Mrs. Keith, a more in-
tellectual type, had already decided that it was a good thing
Eben was safe in Tuckerman’s Ravine. Skiing was a danger-
ous sport, and Eben, cautious about most things, had re-
sponded rather tartly to her suggestion that he should sit
down on the steep places. Still it did not present the pitfalls
of a week-end in Paul Revere Square.

After Mrs. Shatswell’s speech she naturally felt that no
more effort was needed. Silence grew longer and longer like
an overripe icicle.

At last the silver door opened and the pale blue giant an-
nounced: ‘Mrs. Follingsby Clifton. Miss Barrows.’

One of them wore a black hat with a purple bow. The
other wore a purple hat with a black velvet bow. Both wore
beaded strips of black velvet where their chins should have
stopped. The Princess remembered that this call had been
threatened at Mrs. Shatswell’s bridge table, but she could
not remember whether the hats were on the same heads. It
was distinctly unsportsmanlike if the owners had changed
hats : that is, it would have been if the Princess had spent any
mental effort in distinguishing Mrs. Clifton from Miss

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71

Barrows. She did not, but calmly attached the wrong name
to each hat and presented Diana to the occupants.

Diana knew that people had a quaint preference for their
own names. Detecting under the hatbrims expressions not
altogether of sweetness and light, she promptly reversed the
names and addressed the lady under the purple bow as Mrs.
Clifton.

The effect was electric. Something very like a smile illu-
minated Mrs. Clifton’s long reddish face. For a moment she
did not look at all like a cigarstore Indian. Diana, encour-
aged by this animation, ventured another remark. The first
one had been about the weather.

T think I met your husband yesterday, Mrs. Clifton. He
was in my uncle’s office. With some papers,’ she said.

There was a queer silence. Five pairs of eyes were sharply
focused on Diana. The Princess, who had been sprinkling
some blue-green crystals on the burning logs, turned sharply
and, after a brief pause, asked: ‘Did he have on a top hat?’

Princess Lobanov’s green eyes made this question — cer-
tainly a sufficiently silly one — sound faintly menacing.

Diana felt herself flushing, which was also silly since she
had not thrust any hats into the conversation — but she
answered politely: ‘No, Aunt Sophia. He had a soft gray
one.’

The tension in the room relaxed. Miss Barrows began to
talk about the New Deal and everyone was happy in com-
mon gloom.

‘It means the wiping-out of Our Class,’ Princess Lobanov
said.

‘Mr. Maxwell. Mr. Howard Smith. Mr. Dusenbury,’ an-
nounced the red-headed giant.

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

72

The Princess forgot about Our Class. She allowed Mr.
Maxwell, who was small and fluffy, and sandy-haired, Mr.
Howard Smith, who pouted, and Mr. Dusenbury, who had a
jovial pink face like a good baby’s, to kiss her hand a
maneuver which they did very well, for sophomores and
said sweetly: ‘Diana dear, take Miss Follingsby and Mrs.
Harrow — I mean Harrow, stupid of me — downstairs to
the dining-room and see that they have a good tea. And how
about you, Bessie.^ Tea.? Are you ready for tea, Anna.?
Diana will take care of you, I know. Lovely of you, Diana.
Like having a daughter. How I’ve always longed for one!
Can you manage the stairs, Anna.? Or would you just like to
sit quietly here and let someone bring you a cup.? You don’t
min d the stairs.? Really, Anna, you’re marvelous! They
bother me terribly — my back, you know . . .’

The Princess had been in a warm mood when she decorated
the dining-room. It had walls of beaten copper. The fire was
allowed to burn in natural crude tones of red and yellow.
The samovar gleamed brightly and there were forests of
bronze and gold chrysanthemums.

The only light was from the fire and from thick yellow
candles in heavy brass holders. Smoke from cigarettes made
a haze that eddied around the candles. Diana found it hard
to see. The frosty glare of the drawing-room was still in her
eyes. She had an impression of dark shapes moving through
a warm twilight, of pleasant smells — smoke and hot mush-
rooms and tea and chrysanthemums — of the clink of silver
on china, all happily blended.

There was a thin, brown-haired girl behind the samovar.
The candlelight gleamed on her spectacles and sharp nose.

Mrs. Shatswell said vaguely, ‘Polly, this is your cousin

EXCLUSIVE ENTEETAINMENT 73

Diana,’ and fell to work methodically on a plate of canapes
like glistening jewels. It would take, Diana thought, about
three minutes to construct each one. Mrs. Shatswell ate four
in less than a minute without counting the calories. She did
not hurry, but took time to select those with the gray caviar.

Miss Barrows said rather fretfully: ‘There is some currant
jelly in this tart that tastes like fish.’

‘Red caviar,’ said Mrs. Shatswell briefly, beginning on her
fifth canape.

‘I don’t believe there is such a thing,’ Miss Barrows re-
marked.

Mrs. Shatswell did not argue the point. She turned her
attention to the burnt-almond cakes.

The girl behind the samovar grinned cheerfully and said to
Diana: ‘So you’re the country cousin. It’s like red caviar: I
don’t believe in it. Something fishy somewhere. I’m Polly
Shatswell, by the way. Aunt Bessie always expects people
to know by instinct. Incidentally, I’m not related to you —
worse luck. I’m her husband’s niece. But she always forgets
it — the darling. Let down the back hair now and tell me
why you are masquerading as an innocent farm maiden.
Something’s been put over on the Square, it seems.’

Diana had taken an instant likmg to this brusque girl.

She said: ‘Uncle Nicholas bought me some new clothes,
but I’m still a country cousin. I keep expecting that hayseed
will shake off me into the tea. And, by the way, I’m supposed
to get tea for people. Aunt Sophia said.’

‘There’s no use trying to sell any,’ Polly remarked. ‘Aunt
Bessie and Mrs. Keith would as soon drink vodka as tea from
a samovar. The Barrows girls — Mrs. Clifton and her sister,
you know — always take coffee and they’re getting it over

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

there. The younger set likes our pale dry sherry, splendid
full-bodied and a marvelous bouquet. Have a dash of liquid
walnut juice yourself? It’s full of tannic acid, which is fine
for burns, I hear, so if you boil yourself inside you have the
treatment right there. No? Well, try the hors d’oeuvres.
Aunt Bessie left some. I could do with half a dozen myself.
Thanks. Good, aren’t they? Made over at the Russian
Eagle. Aunt Sophia orders them out of some horrid virtue —
patriotism or charity or something. Deluxe result, though.’

Polly Shatswell had a funny voice, slightly nasal but
friendly and cheerful. Her sharp nose was funny, too, but
then so are many noses. Most of the handsome ones are on
statues. She had a wide mouth that turned up at the corners
with an impish twist, and patient hazel eyes like the eyes of
an Irish terrier. It was a pity that her eyes had to be fenced
off from the world by heavy chromium-rimmed spectacles.
To anyone who took the trouble to look behind the glasses
Polly’s eyes showed a wide range of expression, all the way
from a patient gravity to a bright, careless twinkle.

The twinkle was in evidence as Miss Shatswell inquired:
‘And what is our favorite Princess keeping on ice upstairs?
Harvard expects every man to do his duty. Who are the
heroes today?’

‘Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Howard Smith, and Mr. Dusenbury,’
Diana reported accurately.

Polly Shatswell ate something with an anchovy comfort-
ably curled up on it, and murmured: ‘The hand that rocks
the cradle rules the world. I bet she didn’t introduce them
— oh, I forgot. Here I sit eating her food and not drinking
her tea. The cat in women has nine lives. Never mind.’

Diana did not reveal the fact that her Aunt Sophia had

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75

shoved her downstairs as if Diana were a contagious disease
that might be caught by Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Howard Smith
and Mr. Dusenbury in their cradles. She had been annoyed
by being swept out with such speed and efficiency. Now she
began to see that it was funny.

‘It’s a compliment really,’ announced Polly, interpreting
Diana’s silence and smile with easy accuracy. ‘She’d have
introduced ’em to me. And half a dozen more in pencil-
striped suits and little gold whoosises on their watchchains
and ties like Christmas candy and ’

A voice behind Diana said: ‘Can’t I get you something.
Madam, some of our special hors d’oeuvres, for instance?’

She turned and found herself looking at the man whose
hat she had picked out of the gutter. He had brushed his
hair, but it still stuck up here and there in cowlicks. He had
on a Russian blouse of blue linen bordered with an intricate
pattern of red embroidery and a pair of baggy trousers that
would have been a sad shock to Mr. Dusenbury.

Polly Shatswell observed: ‘That’s not a moujik, Diana.
It’s just Peter Lobanov. Peter, this is my cousin — almost
— Diana Joceleyn.’

‘My cousin,’ corrected Peter. ‘I saw her first. I said to
myself, I must paint her. Could I but have, I murmured to
myself, that little head of hers, painted against a background
of pure gold, such as the early Tuscan art prefers, I said. Or
did a guy called Browning say that? Anyway I dropped out
of poetry. Lobanov, I said to myself, look, Lobanov! Her
ears are put on right. No woman in Boston, nor yet in New-
ton Upper Falls, has such ears. I must paint her. Showing
the left ear. The lovelier of the two. A shell. From some far
Tyrian shore.’

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PAUL REVERE SQUAJiJi

He walked around Diana gravely and gazed out of his
green kitten ’s-eyes at her left ear,

‘Don’t mind him,’ suggested Polly, ‘He’s crazy, but quite
harmless,’

Peter gave a sudden pleasant laugh.

‘Now, I remember. This was the unattractive little cousin
from East Alcott, Vermont. I needn’t be bored to come down
to tea. There’s a moral in this, ladies. If I hadn’t been late
because I was selfishly dragging home one of the greatest
little masterpieces that ever came from Old Maestro Loba-
nov’s dustpan and brush, I wouldn’t have seen her. Vice is
rewarded, and virtue foiled again. So there. Princess
Lobanov!’

‘Your mother never saw Diana till this afternoon,’ Polly
remarked.

‘She’s been telling fortunes with tea-leaves then. It’s the
gypsy in her,’ Peter said briskly. ‘Polly, what are we going
to do about this? I hear the tread of ten thousand or so men
of Harvard on the stairs. Dangerous guys — these Harvard
men. I don’t think an innocent girl from the country ought
to meet them. Do you? ’

Polly got up, saying she supposed the back stairs still
worked. Diana found herself being pushed through a door
of copper and brass and up the dim twists and turns of what
Peter described as ‘a priceless period stairway in the original
mahoganized match board.’

When Princess Lobanov came into her dining-room,
attended not only by Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Howard Smith, and
Mr. Dusenbury, but by two other youths equally beautifully
steamed and pressed, she found it gratifymgly clear of com-
petitors. Even Mrs. Shatswell and Mrs. Clifton had eaten

EXCLUSIVE ENTERTAINMENT

77

their way out. The Princess’s motherly intuition did not tell
her that upstairs in Peter’s workshop Diana was saying
firmly: T will not be painted looking like a mouldy slice of
toast.’

T’ll have to change my style then,’ said Peter cheerfully.
‘We’ll begin Monday.’

Polly Shatswell, who had been looking through the big
window at the broken lights in the windy river, said over her
shoulder: ‘It’s quite a tribute, Diana. When he did that
mossgrown effect of me he said he wouldn’t change his style
if Rembrandt dropped iu and offered to hold the brush.’

‘That was a long time ago,’ said Peter hastily.

‘So it was,’ Polly agreed. ‘A year at least.’

Her voice still had its funny twang, but Diana thought she
heard in it somewhere a new note. It was lost, however, in
Peter’s repetition: ‘We’ll begin Monday. No, Tuesday.
Monday I have to be out of town. Tuesday. Maestro Loba-
nov has spoken. He is never wrong.’

Maestro Lobanov, as it turned out, was for once mistaken.

They asked her — Peter asked her and Polly seconded
him — to go to the movies, to go and drink beer at the Hof-
brau, to climb Bunker Hill Monument by moonlight. To
the objection that there was no moon, Peter said he would
have one turned on. To all these suggestions Diana replied
that she was going to spend the evening with her uncle.

They had to let her go. The last guests were kissing the
Princess’s hand. She was wearing her old-world smile: the
Mona Lisa one that she generally kept to go with her For-
tuny tea-gown. Peter saw it stiffen to the look of a sphinx
that has heard bad news as he followed Diana into the

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drawing-room. It was a look that made him think he had
better see the girls home.

Peter and Diana saw Polly home first. She lived with the
Bertram Shatswells, Diana discovered. It wasn’t dinner-time
yet, so Polly and Peter saw Diana home and then Diana and
Peter saw Polly home again. After which bit of courtesy
they all three went and took a look at the river and the
misty-pink glow from the neon signs. Peter’s hair began to
stand on end in the wind and he shivered. So this time Diana
actually went home, duly escorted, of course, and Peter and
Polly walked over to the Shatswells’ again.

At the foot of the Shatswells’ steps Polly asked in her
abrupt way: ‘Going out of town, Monday, doesn’t mean
anything, Peter?’ And Peter said in a weary tone very dif-
ferent from the voice Diana had heard: ‘Not much chance,
I’m afraid. There’ll be dozens ahead of me.’

They were in the vestibule by this time, out of sight of the
Square — if there had been anyone in it. There was no one,
as a matter of fact, except a cynical-looking black cat with a
white patch over one eye. The cat paid no attention to the
long pause in the conversation; neither did she notice the
change in Peter’s voice as he said, ‘I’ll stick to it, though,
till I get something. Don’t worry,’ or that Polly’s had a
queer catch in it as she said, ‘I won’t, Peter. Good luck.’

All the cat listened for, being a cat of principles and en-
lightened self-interest, was the click of the latch. Hearing it
she bounded between the legs of the only Prince in Paul
Eevere Square and went in at the door like a bolt of black
lightning.

Across the Square Diana was putting on the velvet dress
with the fur sleeves. Her uncle had telephoned he would be

EXCLUSIVE ENTERTAINMENT

79

late, but he would like to see it, she thought, when he came
home.

She sat up till nearly midnight, but at last she went to bed,
so he did not see it after all.

SILK HAT

Nicholas Joceleyn spent that Monday moving trying to
teach Diana about Chinese porcelain. Toward noon he said :
‘There are stupider girls than you are in the world.’

Polly, who had dropped in to lunch as casually as if she
had always known Diana, said it was a high compliment.
The idea that perhaps Polly liked her made Diana shy and
excited.

Nicholas Joceleyn seemed to understand how she felt.

‘I’m going to rest,’ he said. ‘You girls can both talk at
once. Don’t waste a minute,’ he added with his eyes gleam-
ing under his shaggy brows.

They took his advice. Polly, who had always, since her
parents died, lived with her Uncle Bertram’s family, gave
Diana what she called a worm’s-eye view of life in the
Square.

It made the life of a worm seem pretty stimulating, Diana
said. She wanted to hear more about it, but Polly had to go
back to her job. She worked in a publishing office.

SILK HAT

81

‘That must be wonderful/ Diana said. ‘You must meet so
many interesting people.’

‘Authors, you mean.^’ Polly asked, jamming on her hat
without a glance in the direction of the mirror.

Diana did mean authors.

‘If you kept a livery stable you’d know horses,’ Polly said
morosely. ‘Authors and horses both look best when they’re
far away. Did you go to the Book Fair?’

‘No, but I did wish ’

‘Authors should be read and not heard,’ Polly announced,
softening this heresy with her impish smile. She was almost
pretty when she smiled, showing a dimple and white teeth.
Diana hated to have her go, but after buttoning the third
button of her coat into the second buttonhole and putting
on two similar gloves, one only slightly darker and larger
than the other, Polly departed.

The car that Nicholas Joceleyn had hired to take them
into the country appeared soon after lunch. It had a chauf-
feur who looked more like a bishop than most bishops do.
Nicholas Joceleyn had put Diana into the car and was getting
in himself when another purred into the Square.

Mr. Follingsby Clifton got out of it. He had his green bag
in his hand. Balanced on his head, well above his ears, was a
top hat. Either the hat had not been designed for Mr.
Clifton or his head had grown during the hat’s lifetime. He
snatched it off hastily, showing a red crease on his pale fore-
head.

Diana suddenly remembered Princess Lobanov’s asking
tensely if Mr. Clifton were wearing a top hat. Mr. Joceleyn,
however, did not appear to see anything sinister in the gleam-
ing silk cylinder that Mr. Clifton put back so precariously on
his stiff gray hair.

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Nicholas Joceleyn said: ‘Oh, Follingsby, I’d given you up.
It’s good of you to bring it. It would have kept till to-
morrow.’

'Said Monday, didn’t you?’ Mr. Clifton nipped off the
words sharply. 'Morning, ’S Joceleyn. Won’t keep you a
minute.’

Two clerks from Mr. Clifton’s office got out of the car.
They did not have silk hats, but they walked as much as
possible like the owner of that dignified symbol.

Mr. Joceleyn said: 'Need three, don’t we — here, Murphy,
you’ll do. Come in a minute, please,’ Nicholas Joceleyn said
to the chauffeur-bishop.

Mr. Clifton rescued the hat from a probable roll in the
gutter, gave it a sour look, and put it on again at a new and
equally rakish angle. Then: he marched up the steps beside
Nicholas Joceleyn, swinging the green bag with the precision
of a pendulum. The chauffeur lumbered after them. The
benevolent placidity of his red face showed no surprise at
his employer’s request. Even the fat bulges above his collar
radiated kindly unconcern.

Nicholas Joceleyn felt relaxed and happy in the warmth of
Diana’s presence. Yet twice during the drive that twisting,
burning pain had flashed down his left arm and had left him
gasping for his next breath. He managed to conceal the gasp
both times. It tired him to talk. The crisp air made him
sleepy. He leaned back in his corner and shut his eyes for a
moment. It lengthened into minutes, five, perhaps, while
Diana watched him anxiously. His profile against the dark
cloth was like a wax medallion. It might almost, with the
fine arch of the Joceleyn nose and the firm lines of the chin,
have been a portrait of Washington. But portraits of Wash-

SILK HAT

88

ington always had a sturdy look and about Nicholas Joceleyn
there was a sort of translucency.

He woke as suddenly as he had dozed oflF. The effect of his
eyes opening was like a light turned on in a dark room.

‘You must forgive me,’ he said with his brilliant smile,
‘I worked late last night. But I can play for a while now.
Where would you like to go — Bermuda? California? I’ve
heard of a place in Arizona where they say the air’s like
drinking diamonds set in gold. Sounds indigestible, but it
must be good because I heard that some people from Boston
there spoke to each other without being introduced. Just a
traveler’s tale probably . . . China — no. I suppose we can’t
go there. I’d like to see Nick. But he’s on his way home al-
ready. He cabled. We might meet him in Hawaii. But you
choose.’

He stopped with a laugh because it was pleasant to have
Diana’s face to laugh at. Her eyes opened, showing the gold
flecks in the brown. Her mouth opened enough to set the
dimple going. Nicholas Joceleyn thought that her ridicu-
lously short nose quivered a little at the tip. Perhaps it did.

All she said was: ‘Oh, Uncle Nicholas. Hawaii!’ but he
seemed to find it an adequate remark.

‘I’ll get the tickets,’ he said, ‘in the morning.’

Naturally Mr. FoUingsby Clifton had not gone up the
steps of the Joceleyn house wearing a silk hat without at-
tracting the attention of Paul Revere Square. It was after-
noon, however, before the news reached Mrs. Keith. Miss
Lucinda Popham had been busy writing a poem (the muse
was in the saddle, as Miss Popham put it) and had not tele-
phoned very promptly. Mrs. Keith, however, with her

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Board of Lady Managers efficiency, lost no time in calling
Princess Lobanov’s number.

The Princess was sitting in front of her mirror in a mood of
Southern languor. Peter was stretched out on the chaise
longue observing his mother’s work as an exterior decorator
through half-closed eyes. She had just refused his request
to lend hiTn enough money to buy a partnership in a little
tea-room and antique shop on the Worcester TurnpHce. It
was, as she said, a ridiculous idea. She pointed out, entirely
without rancor, that whenever Peter thought he had found a
job, it was always a question of putting money into some very
shaky business. Not that she was aimoyed with him, she
said generously, but the thing for him to do was to stick to
his painting.

She was wearing, in preparation for possible invasion,
black velvet and pearls and a mantilla with a red camellia
caught in it. Her slurred and decorated drawl disappeared
as she answered the telephone.

'PoUingsby Clifton? Silk hat? I will see Nicholas at once,’
she said crisply. ‘Tactful? Really, Anna. I think you can
trust me. I will tell you sometime what the Czar said about
my tact.’

‘You have,’ said Mrs. Keith and himg up.

‘What’s all this hocus-pocus about silk hats?’ Peter asked,
yawm'ng. ‘This is the third time I’ve heard it.’

The Princess, who had just thrown the camellia into the
fireplace and was busy extricating herself from the mantilla,
said impatiently: ‘Heard it twice and didn’t tell me! And
you waste your time trying to buy a silly little gifte shoppe!
It only means your uncle’s been changing his will, that’s all.’

‘What makes you think so?’

SILK HAT

85

The pupils of Peter’s green eyes contracted and his light,
lazy figure stiffened into attention as sharply as a dozing cat
grows tense at a dog barking in the next yard. His voice,
however, remained casual.

The Princess, who had gone into her dressing-room where
she was tearing off the velvet dress, answered lightly: ‘Aren’t
you just the merest trifle feeble-minded, darling? Surely you
know by this time that every respectable firm of Boston
lawyers keeps a top hat in the office so that whoever goes to
draw a will can wear it. It’s a tradition — like those frowzy
balls of dead fish at Sunday breakfast. Nothing less than an
important will would put a tall hat on the head of Follingsby
Clifton. He probably had on brown shoes,’ added the Prin-
cess with a shudder.

She appeared in her street clothes. Peter was standing
near her dressing-table playing with a lipstick in a gold case.

‘So a silk hat is a sign for the vultures to gather,’ he said
slowly. ‘I don’t quite see what you expect to accomplish at
this point. It’s not likely he’d change it again.’

‘He may not have signed it yet. Give me that, please. I
need it.’

Peter handed over the lipstick and picked up her bag in-
stead, opening and shutting its various compartments with
his thin fingers. Princess Lobanov, arranging her face for
outdoor work at the big triple mirror, went on: ‘I may easily
persuade him. Nicholas has a great sense of responsibility
for his sisters. I shall appeal to that. And at least I can find
out if that girl is making a fool of him. My bag, please.’

‘You don’t need it,’ Peter said quietly. ‘You’re not going
over there to spoil the only fun the old boy’s had this last
thirty years. Besides, you’re not even sure he’s left her any-

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PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

thing. And what if he has! He’s got plenty. You’re not
going.’

‘Just how do you expect to stop me.'* . . . Don’t be . . . ridic-
ulous ... let go of my wrist. You’re . . . hurting me.’

‘As soon as you say you’re not going,’ Peter said softly.

Princess Lobanov laughed sharply.

‘Darling Peter. How strong you are ! Wonderful what you
can do with one hand to a woman twice your age . . . But of
course I won’t go. In fact,’ added the Princess, ‘I think it
will suit my plans better not to go.’

Peter let go her wrist.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Why, whatever you think I mean, no doubt, darling boy.
How lucky my dress has long sleeves. The bruise won’t show
at all. I do wish you’d told me sooner, Peter. I wouldn’t
have changed.’

‘Told you what?’

‘Why, that you didn’t want me to see your uncle. About
your — er — rustic chivalry. How clever of you to see that
she can be civilized,’ the Princess said, shutting the door of
her dressing-room.

Peter lay down on the chaise longue again. There was a
dull ache between his eyes and the blood beat loud in his ears.

He did not hear the other door of the dressing-room open
into the hall, nor his mother’s light step on the thick stair
carpet. It was not, in fact, until Princess Lobanov was being
escorted by Burwell to Nicholas Joceleyn’s study that Peter
realized she had gone.

Mr. Joceleyn had just come in, Burwell said, looking
peevish as he showed the Princess into the dingy, untidy

SILK HAT

87

little room where Ming jars shouldered their way out of piles
of papers. Pipes and pipe-cleaners and tin tobacco boxes
competed with first editions for space on the tabletop. The
sofa sagged comfortably under the owner’s long frame.

He was reading ‘The Newcomes’ for the eleventh time.
The smoke from his pipe puffed up through the shade of the
lighted lamp near him in a blue pillar. Through it the por-
trait of Diana’s mother in rose and silver brocade looked
down at him. Stephen Joceleyn had painted her with a
straightforward simplicity; the pompadour of brown-gold
hair, the luster of brocade, the creamy softness of old lace,
the velvety crimson of the roses in her hands were accurately
and carefully done, although the hands themselves were un-
finished. The expression was a little stiff, a little conscious —
the look of a magazine cover of the period. There was no
stir of a dimple like Diana’s in the neatly tinted cheek, no
sparkle of mischief in the eyes. They were gray-blue serious
eyes, not Diana’s gold-flecked brown ones. She looked down
at the littered room with the grave indifference of a girl on a
candy box for the candy under the lid.

Princess Lobanov paid the portrait the tribute of a glance
and a shrug of the shoulders: a movement so slight that it
might have been taken for an adjustment of the silver foxes
that had — doubtless gladly — laid down their lives to make
the Princess beautiful. The shrug was a tribute. Ordinarily
she would not have noticed the portrait at all. Now she felt
impatience. First with Nicholas for his sentiment m keeping
in his room the unfinished picture. It was evident, surely,
that when Stephen dropped his brush, leaving the hands un-
finished, it wasn’t because Carol looked the way he had
painted her — so smug and innocent. Obviously he wouldn’t

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PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

have taken the picture since he had the original, but Nicholas
ought not to have wanted it either. He ought to have had
more pride. The impatience was also for Carol Willard her-
self whose daughter was now threatening Princess Lobanov’s
security. What a fool she had been, the stiff quiet girl with
the pompadour ! To have had Nicholas and let him go. To
have had Stephen and let him waste his money and talent.
To have died and left her burdens to others.

All this was in the shrug, but Nicholas Joceleyn, getting
up wearily from his place on the sofa, laying down pipe and
book, did not see it.

It was, his sister said, horrid of her to break into his after-
noon tryst with Thackeray. But where else to catch him?
He was like a rainbow. When you put your finger on him, he
wasn’t there. And speaking of rainbows and pots of gold and
things, the Princess did want to consult him — here she in-
serted flattering words concerning his judgment — about
her investments. Which were not pots of gold. Definitely.

‘To tell you the truth, Nicholas,’ she added frankly, ‘I
was an awful idiot to sell you my share in the Company. I’m
not getting the income I used to.’

‘I suppose you mean you’ve overdrawn your account
again,’ Nicholas Joceleyn said, sitting down at his desk and
opening a drawer. ‘I can let you have five hundred, Sophia,
but that’s all. I’m going on a cruise and I’ll need some cash
myself.’

‘It’s too generous of you, Nicholas,’ murmxired the Prin-
cess. ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’

Her brother shoved aside Chapman’s ‘Homer’ and ‘The
Corpse in the Orchid Bathtub’ and began to write in a large
checkbook.

SILK HAT

89

‘How lucky to be going on a cruise! The Red gods call us
Joceleyns and we must go, I always say. Hard to resist,
isn’t it?’

‘Not particularly,’ Nicholas said, pressing a blotter down
over his neat black signature. ‘I’ve resisted it for thirty
years.’

‘Of course you have. Always sacrificing yourself for the
rest of us ! ’ the Princess exclaimed penitently.

She took the check, folded it neatly, and put it into her
bag. Suddenly her face brightened and she said: ‘Nicholas,
darling, I have the most marvelous idea. I’ll go with you.
I’d thought of Palm Beach. On Peter’s accoimt. He must
meet the right people. But it doesn’t matter. I can persuade
him. I give it wp,’ said the Princess, throwing up one scarlet-
tipped hand in a gesture of renunciation,

‘You mustn’t change your plans on my account,’ her
brother said hastily. ‘Besides — er — Diana’s going with
me.’

‘Oh, the little Vermont girl! How nice of you, Nicholas.
I always say there’s no end to what you do for the family.
It will do wonders for her to be with you.’

‘Wonders for me, you mean.’

‘It’s like you to put it that way. Just modesty. To be
with a distinguished man like you will form her manners.’

‘Is there something wrong with them?’

He spoke curtly. That pain had burrowed into his arm
again.

‘No. No. Not at all. A little rustic and shy, perhaps.
Possibly she felt overdressed,’ the Princess said charitably.
‘Elaborate clothes often ’

‘Elaborate! What are you talking about? They’re simple
enough.’

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‘To a man, yes. But women, you know, have a sort of in-
stinct. I’m not a bit clever, but I can sense Schiaparelli just
the way a mouse can find cheese in the dark. I feel it in my
elbows,’ explained the Princess, and added kindly: ‘She’ll be
needing cruise things. I would so like to help. Something
suitable and girlish. I know a little dress shop . . .’

‘Thank you, Sophia. I’ll tell her you’ve offered.’

Nicholas Joceleyn turned a longing glance at ‘The New-
comes,’ but his sister went on relentlessly: ‘Is she educated
to support herself at all? What will she do after your cruise? ’

‘Live here, I hope.’

‘That’s so generous of you, Nicholas. And yet — I’m going
to be awfully modem and it may shock you — isn’t that
making a dependent of her? You know young people want
their own work. Their own place. Take Peter, for instance.
He is happy because he creates. I insisted on his having his
own studio. I never go into it without invitation. Never.
He goes to it by the back way. Has his own world. His own
friends. And his own ideas,’ concluded the Princess nursing
one wrist with the other hand.

‘I always thought he’d do well in business,’ Nicholas
Joceleyn said.

‘Why, Nicholas, you know what a failure he was in the
Tea Company.’

This was old ground. Nicholas Joceleyn coughed and
said nothing.

His sister went on: ‘Modern girls need a career. A girl
with background can always get into a good dress shop, I
could speak to Maria Towers . . . ’

‘It won’t be necessary for Diana to work in a shop. Those
jobs ought to be for girls who need them.’

SILK HAT

91

‘But, Nicholas — forgive me for bringing it up — even
you aren’t immortal. I do hope you’ve provided for her —
in case . < , ’

‘I’ve left her something. A — a little annuity,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, Sophia.’

If the Princess detected a note of irony in his voice, she
did not admit it. She settled her furs, and gave another
glance at Stephen Joceleyn’s portrait of his wife: a patroniz-
ing glance. She felt sorry for the poor thing. And a little
annuity for her daughter was perfectly suitable.

‘It’s lucky she’s going away,’ thought the Princess, putting
on her gloves. ‘By the time she gets back Peter can be some-
where else. A little annuity . . . How easily I found it out.
Anna need not talk about tact.’

As it was not Princess Lobanov’s habit to run hooks into a
fish after she had caught it, she now left her brother to his
reading.

He felt strangely breathless after her visit. For a few
minutes he did not even try to find his place in ‘The New-
comes,’ but sat still with the cold pipe in his hand.

He thought with a gasp of annoyance of what the Princess
said about Diana’s being overdressed. The pain burrowed
along his arm again. He muttered: ‘Are you there, old
Truepenny.^ ’

He thought for a moment of calling Doctor Lomond.

‘He’ll only send me to bed. I’m going on that cruise. Be
all right when I get on the boat,’ he thought, fumbling for a
match. ‘Jealousy, that’s all,’ he said, half aloud, thinking of
his sister. ‘She won’t get a chance to buy Diana any girl
scout outfit.’

He looked up into Carol Joceleyn’s placid blue eyes. When

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the picture first hung there, he had never looked at it with-
out shame — not anger at the treachery of the two people
he had loved best, not jealousy, not resentment even over
having been made ridiculous, but shame — a dull, sick ache
because the dishonor of others had touched his own integrity.
That feeling faded. Pity took its place, but pity is an emo-
tion that needs something to live on. It faded too; became
as the years went by little more than a habit of looking some-
times at a pleasantly colored canvas in arframe of dull gold.

This afternoon the picture seemed real again, and he
made his promise to see about the cruise partly to the picture,
partly to himself.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said aloud. ‘In the morning.’

But in the morning Nicholas Joceleyn was dead.

EEAL, PERSONAL, AND MIXED

In the preparations for Nicholas Joceleyn’s funeral Diana
had, she felt, no part. Indeed there was.no reason, she told
herself, why she should. Everything was carried out with
admirable efficiency. This was no matter, as it had been
when Stephen Joceleyn died, of amateurishly setting folding
chairs in a house swept clean by the hands of the neighbors.
No one brought pickle bottles with sprays of apple blossoms,
nor brown jugs crammed with cowslips to Paul Revere
Square. No one ran in with a batch of doughnuts, or a dish
of codfish in cream, or platters of macaroni and salmon
salad — ‘just in case the men folks might want a lunch.’
There was no respectful creaking of the heavy boots of sun-
burned men in dark blue serge; no kitchen full of women in
flowered prints silently appraising the polish of the stove;
no small child prattling through the minister’s eulogy.

. . . Our departed brother was a good neighbor. He came
here to East Alcott from larger spheres, but he was always,
as folks say here, a ‘common’ man, friendly to young and

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old. He loved these hills from whence cometh our strength
and every flower and fern that grows . . .

There was no place for Diana’s small experience, nor for
her grief in the consultations in the cold library. Ushers . . .
Honorary pallbearers . . . Mount Auburn . . . Earnestly re-
quested ... no flowers . . . Casket closed . . . covered with
laurel — no, not laurel — Horticultural Society people
would notice: laurel has to be conserved. Definitely . . . Ivy,
yes, a wreath of ivy . . . His class at Harvard on the right . . .
Museum . . . Prom the Symphony . . . the Fogg . . . Depart-
ment heads of the Tea Company . . . Can’t seat the other
employees . . . Food afterward? Not necessary. Just the
family.

Not that Diana was neglected. Ebenezer Joceleyn Keith
was too efficient for that. She was politely summoned to
the conferences, politely consulted, politely told that she
had better wear black until after the funeral. Not longer.
Joceleyns never mourned. It was considered insincere —
after the funeral.

Mr. Keith, who made this explanation, was a young man
who had a faculty of looking at you without apparently
seeing you; of listening to you without seeming to hear you.
He sniffed with his austerely chiseled nose at some lilies
that someone had sent in defiance of the edict in the Tran-
script, but whether he actually smelled them is doubtful.
He gave Diana a thin hand like the tail of a dead haddock
and took it away again apparently without feeling the
warmth of hers.

She felt an irritation with him, unreasonable considering
that he was the only member of the family who paid her any
attention at all. To the others she was — in the old black

REAL. PERSONAL, AND MIXED

95

dress that she had put on again — no more significant than
an old umbrella that Nicholas Joceleyn might have left in
the stand with his malacca canes, a shabby umbrella with a
gilt knob. Gilt, not gold.

Princess Lobanov had relieved an anxiety that for a few
hours pressed hard on the minds of the family. ‘A small
annuity,’ she had reported and the Joceleyn clan was able to
go calmly about the mourning rites.

Diana resented the calm. She resented the phrases of
resignation . . . Thank you so much . . . Yes, in his sleep.
We are naturally upset but . . . hopeless . . . never would
have been well . . . Yes, beautiful way to go . . . Release . . .
we couldn’t wish . . . spared suffering . . . Yes, time heals all
wounds.

All wounds that are skin deep, Diana thought savagely,
and yet with a knowledge that wounds did heal. Even if you
didn’t want them to. Even if you tried to keep them open.
When her father died, she felt as if blood were oozing drop
by drop from some internal hurt. Yet in six months that
wound had healed, except when some east wind of recollec-
tion set it aching.

This ache over her uncle would stop, too, before long.
There was more compassion in it than grief — the same com-
passion she might have felt for a small boy shut out of the
circus.

‘Release!’ ‘Spared suffering!’ He didn’t want release.
He wanted to live. To sail to Hawaii. And the door had been
shut in his face. Did he know it was going to shut, she
wondered. No, I don’t think so. When I said that last
night, ‘This was the best day of all,’ he laughed and said,
‘There are better ones coming. Lots of them.’ I don’t
think he knew.

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PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

She had plenty of time to think in those days before the
funeral. Her own future tugged at her for consideration, but
she pushed it aside.

‘Perhaps,’ she thought, ‘that animated ice-pick will give
me a job in the Tea Company. I could run one of those
machines that grab pinches of tea and tie it into bags. I’m
not going to worry. I’m exactly like all the others — think-
ing of themselves. I will study about Chinese porcelain.
Uncle Nicholas told me to read his books. I will.’

By reading the big, worn books, by checking pictures with
the actual bowls and vases, Diana kept the thought of the
future at bay. But if she was, or seemed, neglectful of it,
there were others who did not take it so lightly. The idea,
entertained by Diana, that no one but Eben Keith paid her
any attention was an illusion. At the very moment when
she began to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica on Ceramics,
her aimts were making plans for her. That is. Princess
Lobanov and Mrs. Keith were making plans. Mrs. Shatswell,
whose blue eyes and pleasant pink face were swollen and
distorted by tears, was, as usual in a crisis, no help at
all.

It was the Princess who suggested that they ought to do
something for Diana.

‘I thought you said that Nicholas ’ Mrs. Shatswell

stopped and wiped her eyes. She did so every time her
brother’s name was mentioned.

The Princess was weary of this gesture which she con-
sidered sentimental, as no doubt it was, but she said with
admirable patience: ‘Yes, the little annuity. But the life of
a woman on a little annuity with no career, no interests. It’s
a deplorable position.’

REAL, PERSONAL, AND MIXED

97

‘We might add to it/ said Mrs. Shatswell. ‘And I could
always give her a home. Polly likes her.’

‘You’re surely not suggesting making a charity case out of
her!’ the Princess exclaimed. ‘That’s not constructive,
Bessie. Anna, you’re so wonderful about girls with all those
committees and things — can’t you think of something con-
structive? ’

Mrs. Keith said in her deep, hoarse voice : ‘Training. Voca-
tional. Obviously. Perhaps Simmons.’

‘That would be nice,’ Mrs. Shatswell said; ‘she would be
here four years and she could live with me.’

It had not escaped the Princess that this plan would mean
that Diana would be in Boston for four years.

‘That seems a long course,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘because
Diana must be twenty-four or five already.’

‘Twenty-one,’ Mrs. Shatswell said. ‘It’s in my birthday
book. I remember . . . ’

Prmcess Lobanov never hesitated to plunge into Mrs.
Shatswell’s river of memory.

‘I think I’ve heard of a course, not in Boston I’m afraid —
now, where was it — oh, yes. New York. Tea-room manage-
ment. Just takes a year. And then a girl can open up some
quaint old country tavern in Vermont and call it the Purple
Parrot and have lots of Mexican pottery in the gift shop.
And, of course, she coxild get her tea wholesale. Anna
could speak to Eben about it.’

The Princess paused after this burst of inspiration and
looked at her sisters. Mrs. Keith nodded so briskly that her
stiff white pompadour skidded. She straightened it and
said: ‘Very suitable.’

Mrs. Shatswell said: ‘Nicholas would like that. About

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

the tea, I mean,’ and, after wiping her eyes, added: ‘We could
all help pay for the school. And then buy things. I always
thought myself I would like to have a little tea and gift shop.
Of course I wouldn’t know where to find all those things
they have in them. I always say I can’t see how people are
so clever to think them up. Why, half the time I don’t even
know what they are. It must be expensive to get enough,
but we could all subscribe.’

‘Yes, we could, of course.’

Princess Lobanov brought out a black-and-silver cigarette
holder — she was in mourning until after the funeral, so the
jade one was out of commission — and what looked like a
slab of aspic jelly with cigarettes embedded in it.

‘About a thousand apiece,’ Mrs. Shatswell suggested.

After a moment of silence during which the Princess blew
smoke thoughtfully between the prisms of an ormolu candle-
stick, Mrs. Shatswell marked her suggestion down to five
hundred dollars.

Mrs. Keith said she scarcely thought they need decide on a
definite sum now. Circumstances could govern that. The
Princess said there would be plenty of time to go into details
later. Especially as Diana would have her little annuity.

‘What she needs just now,’ the Princess said, ‘is not money,
but advice.’

It was decided to give her advice.

Diana was unprepared for the beauty of the funeral.
East Alcott would have found it cold — the stiff pattern of
square white pews full of dark figures, the classic formality
of the music, the austerity of the wreath of ivy on the black
pall. It was all as impersonal as the cadences of the service.

REAL, PERSONAL, AND MIXED

99

She had never heard the service before, yet it was as
familiar as wind in pines, or distant thunder, or the sea run-
ning in over smooth pebbles. It expressed Nicholas Joceleyn
better than any eloquence about him. Under the pressure of
the quiet phrases Diana felt her resentment vanish. Instead
came the sense that her relation to her uncle, brief as it was,
had been a real thing and was so still; that it had an existence
quite independent of his death, an existence as actual as that
of his Ming yellow jars. It was not simply that she would
remember his kindness. It still protected and sheltered her.
She felt that it always would.

In this mood the reading of her uncle’s will in the chilly
library had for her a quality of unreality. She hardly
listened to the piled mountains of benevolence. Eben Keith
was one of the executors, she noticed, and she saw him
straighten into a pose of new dignity. The long list of public
bequests seemed only an echo of the institutions represented
in the square pews. Harvard . . . Symphony . . . Horticul-
ture . . . Museum of . . . Society for . . . The pages rattled
in Follingsby Clifton’s stiff fingers and his voice rattled on.
Thousands. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands.
They fell as swiftly as peas rattling into a pan.

She had no sense of the number of peas — or dollars.
Only that they were falling. They rained on down: small
bequests to friends, comfortable legacies to the servants,
annuities to distant cousins, even a small one for herself. In
her gratitude she hardly felt a growing tension in the darken-
ing room.

The only light was the green-shaded reading-lamp beside
Mr. Clifton. The papers were white under it. Mr. Clifton’s
stiff cuffs were white. His hands were a brownish-gray. His

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

spiky gray hair had a greenish glare on it from the lampshade.
So did his bristly mustache and his thin pale cheeks.

The big dim room had a great many dark figures in it.
Diana’s eyes grew used to the light, she began to recognize
some of them. The servants were in a group behind her.
She knew Minna’s loud breathing, Sarah’s cough, and
Hannah’s sniffle. She could hear Burwell clear his throat,
and the little kitchenmaid’s murmur of ‘Saints bless him,
the good man,’ when her own name appeared among the
legacy -holders. Across the room on the window-seat were
three men. Peter was one of them. He sat with his touzled
head and square-nosed profile dark against one window,
looking out through another into the twilight. The high-
shouldered figure with the narrow head was Eben Keith’s.
He turned often and the light glinted on his spectacles. The
round-faced, sleekly brushed one must be Bill Shatswell, she
supposed. Even in the fading light there was a kind look
about him that reminded her of Aunt Bessie.

She could see her aunts clearly. They were near the lamp.

Mrs. Keith sat very straight in a high-backed chair. Mrs.
Shatswell filled most of a small sofa. Her handkerchief was
a wet ball in her plump, pink hand. Princess Lobanov
leaned back gracefully in a chair of scarlet leather. Her eyes
were half-closed and her long hands were quiet in her lap,
but the light shifted on her ankles as she crossed and un-
crossed her feet.

A sallow, sulky-looking, black-haired boy was watching
the Princess’s feet. He kept a thin hand tugging at his
black hair, sometimes pushing it back from a high square
forehead, sometimes pulling it down so that it flopped over
his steel-rimmed spectacles. Occasionally he took his eyes

EEAL, PERSONAL, AND MIXED

101

off the Princess’s feet and scowled at Diana’s instead. After
a while he used his right hand to pull his left ear forward
and worked at his hair with his left hand. Having disar-
ranged it to his satisfaction, he massaged the twist in his
long nose for a while. At last he thrust both hands into his
pockets and leaned forward with his eyes on the lawyer.

This movement was only part of a ripple of motion that
went through the room. The little man who occupied the
other third of Mrs. Shats well’s sofa smoothed his black beard
to a neater point. Two of the men on the window-seat shifted
their positions slightly. Mrs. Keith sat even more stiffly in
her stiff chair. Mrs. Shatswell blew her nose. Princess
Lobanov uncrossed her feet and tapped the toe of the right
one twice on the rug. Only Peter Lobanov continued to
stare out at the iron settee in the garden. Or perhaps at the
brick wall behind it. At any rate he did not move.

Neither did Diana.

To my sister Anna Joceleyn Keith ... To my sister Eliza-
beth Joceleyn Shatswell . . . To my sister Sophia Joceleyn
Lobanov.

Diana wondered if they were satisfied with what he had
left them — sums so large that she herself could hardly
grasp them. Did Mrs. Keith and the Princess like the fact
that Mrs. Shatswell, because she had two sons, had received
twice as much as the others. There was no telling by their
faces. Aunt Bessie was mopping hers with a clean handker-
chief that the little man with the beard had poked at her.
The Princess and Mrs, Keith preserved their admirable in-
difference.

Were the three men on the window-seat annoyed because
they had received only small sums — ‘to buy something as a

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remembrance.’ There was no telling from their faces. How
did they like Singleton’s getting more ‘because he has never
asked me for money’? How did they feel about the legacy
to the absent Nick? No telling . . .

‘And I further direct that my executors shall cancel sums
owed me by my sister Sophia Joceleyn Lobanov not exceed-
ing thirty thousand dollars . . . ’

Princess Lobanov preserved her pose of graceful languor.
Her long white hands lay quiet against her black dress.
Even her feet were still. Her only movement was to touch
with her pointed scarlet tongue the scarlet slash of her lips.

Mrs. Keith received some furniture. She murmured, ‘How
good of Nicholas.’ Apparently it was all right to express
gratitude for a mahogany sideboard if not for money. Mrs.
Shatswell sobbed out loud over a legacy of jewelry and silver.

‘Up to this point,’ Mr. Clifton said, ‘the will duplicates
one drawn last year. The only change is in the following
provision

‘All the rest, residue and remainder of my property, real,
personal, and mixed, wheresoever situate, which I may own
and possess and to which I may be entitled at the time of my
death, I give, devise, and bequeath to my niece, Diana
Joceleyn . . . ’

The room seemed to swing around Diana’s head. Then it
stood still in a grim silence full of eyes. And Mr. Clifton’s
voice went on, ‘and I request that she catalogue and classify
my collection of Chinese earthenware and porcelain and

make it available to students I make this bequest partly

because of my affection for my niece’s parents; partly in
gratitude for her companionship.’

The black-haired boy had turned his thick spectacles on

REAL, PERSONAL, AND MIXED

103

her. She saw that behind the lenses his eyes were brilliant,
gentle, and understanding. They reminded her of her uncle’s
and brought a dazzle of tears to her own eyes. He saw them
and looked away.

Eben Keith broke the silence with his harsh, high voice.

‘But the Tea Company — it means he’s left her the Tea
Company. It’s insane.’

He strode out of the shadows toward Mr. Clifton.

‘Mr. Joceleyn no longer owned Joceleyn & Company,
Eben,’ Mr. Clifton said curtly, and went on folding up the
thick sheets.

Eben Keith said hoarsely: ‘Didn’t own it? Didn’t own the
business? ’ And the hiss of the word business ran around the
room.

‘Not in the sense that you mean, Eben. It is still part of
his estate, but your uncle had for some time doubted the
wisdom or practicability of trying to maintain Joceleyn &
Company as a family business,’ Mr. Clifton said, still busily
folding. ‘He felt that under the present government such
companies were doomed. Some months ago he took steps
to make the company into a profit-sharing corporation.
The papers have been ready for several weeks. The plans
were delayed because of his illness. Last Friday and Satur-
day he completed the arrangements. That is, he has indi-
cated what he wished done and left it in the hands of three
trustees to carry out the plan.’

‘Why, he couldn’t do that. My mother. My aunts. They
owned the business too,’ Eben Keith said, lowering his
narrow head so that the green light from the lamp flashed on
his spectacles,

‘Your mother and her sisters sold their interest in Joceleyn

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

& Company to Mr, Nicholas Joceleyn more than a year ago/

‘Why wasn’t I told about this? After all, I’m Assistant
Manager of the Company.’

‘Possibly because you were in Tuckerman’s Ravine,’ Mr.
Clifton suggested dryly.

Eben Keith turned angrily toward his mother.

‘You — why didn’t you — ?’

‘Nicholas wanted to carry out his plan without publicity,’
Mrs. Keith said coldly. ‘We can discuss this later. In
private.’

The servants, guided by Burwell, had already left the
room. Diana slipped out after them, but not in time to miss
hearing Eben Keith say furiously: ‘And this residuary lega-
tee hocus-pocus; who was his residuary legatee before?’
And Mr. Clifton’s answer: ‘His former will was destroyed,
Eben. Its provisions don’t concern us.’

Eben’s voice rose still higher: ‘Gratitude for companion-
ship! Two or three weeks’ companionship. Pretty fishy.
I’ve a good mind to take it into court . . . ’

ARRIVAL AT NIGHT

The voices in the libraet rose and fell. They boomed
and grated, whined and shrilled in a discordant clash of
sound.

Diana was glad she had escaped. Apparently no one had
missed her. She stood on the landing looking down into the
hall. Burwell stood by the front door. His pose was all
correctness, but there was a grin of enjoyment on his face
as he listened to the sound and fury in the library.

This expression faded into bland politeness as Diana’s
aunts appeared. She waited to see if they would ask for her,
but they went quickly through the hall without speaking.
Mrs. Keith’s rubber heels thudded on the marble. Mrs.
Shatswell lumbered along, pushed rather than supported by
her bearded little husband. The Princess slithered languidly
through the hall. A few paces behind her came a woman
Diana had not noticed before. She saw now only the top of
a black hat, beautifully arranged silvery hair, and a straight,
slight figure in dark gray tweed. There was something

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PAUL BEVEKE SQUABE

curiously calm and peaceful about her way of moving.
Behind her the harsh voices in the library still sounded.
Ahead of her the tense group of the Joceleyn sisters hurried.
Bertram Shatswell, the poet of the Square, stabbed the air
fiercely with his beard as he looked for his hat.

He did not look at the woman behind him, but Burwell
did.

'BurwelFs a mirror,’ thought Diana, seeing the impervious
courtesy with which he shut the door behind Princess
Lobanov mellow to something quite different.

The others, in spite of their haste, had said good night to
the butler politely enough, but it was the impersonal polite-
ness that advertises the speaker’s ideal in manners. The
woman in gray tweed, however, regarded Burwell as a human
being.

‘You will miss him most of all, Burwell. I’m sorry,’ she
said gently, and gave him her hand.

T — I — He was ’ Burwell choked, coughed, but

managed at last a ‘Thank you, Mrs. Joceleyn,’ that was only
an approximation of his usual manner.

Mrs. Joceleyn must, Diana realized, be her Uncle John’s
widow to whom her sisters-in-law wouldn’t speak even at a
funeral. Burwell shut the door behind Mrs. Joceleyn and for
a moment leaned his forehead against one of its walnut
panels. Then, hearing footsteps, he turned and straightened
into correct and glassy imperturbability.

Diana could not see Singleton Shatswell shrug himself out
of the library, but she did hear the door open and slam and
the men’s voices fade into a distant rumble behind it.

Out of the dark spot under the staircase slouched Single-
ton’s gangling figure. The silence of the hall was broken by

ARRIVAL AT NIGHT

107

his petulant voice saying to the butler: ‘That girl, Burwell

— where did she go?’

The question did two things to Diana. She hadn’t felt
she was eavesdropping before, only waiting in case anyone
wanted her. Singleton’s question made her feel like an
eavesdropper, but it also made her think: ‘Here’s someone
who wants me. Even if it’s the funny-looking boy, like a
young Aldous Huxley, only plainer, it’s something.’

The force of the two thoughts impelled her downstairs
and she found herself looking up into Singleton Shatswell’s
scowling face and having her hand crushed painfully in a
warm bony clasp.

‘I’m — how do you do — I’m Sing Shatswell. Polly said

— I thought ’ he mumbled in a new bass voice which

had tenor notes in surprising places; and then added more
clearly, ‘ Cousin, across the Square.’

‘I know,’ Diana smiled up at him, and saw that, while his
mouth still looked sulky, there was a flicker behind the
spectacles that was very likely intended for a smile.

It disappeared quickly as he jerked his black head toward
the library, saying : ‘ Conference for men only. Eben makes
me sick. I’m just as much a nephew as the rest of ’em.
Needn’t keep tellin’ me I’m a minor.’

‘You don’t look much like one from down here,’ Diana
observed. ‘How old are you really — nineteen?’

‘Seventeen, next month.’

Singleton relaxed his pouting expression and grinned sud-
denly, an exercise that disclosed the fact that he wore bands
on his teeth.

‘Wear size twelve shoes and I’m six feet two,’ he an-
nounced. ‘It’s natural enough you’d make the mistake.

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PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

But beKeve it or not by Ripley that’s what I am. Seventeen.
Practically. And I could fix Eben Keith with one hand so
he’d look as if he’d been down Tuckerman’s on his nose.’

He brooded on this pleasant thought for a moment, and
then added: ‘The dirty little will-breaker,’

‘He can’t really, can he?’

‘Clifton says not. Says Uncle Nicholas was saner than
any of us. “Go right ahead, Eben,” he said, “and try to
break it. It’ll be splendid,” he said, “for the lawyers.
There’s nothing lawyers like better than a good fat will case.
Remember ‘Bleak House,”’ he said. Eben said he didn’t.
It’d be pretty tough on Eben to have to read “Bleak House.”
He moves his lips when he reads,’ Singleton Shatswell
remarked solemnly. ‘Doesn’t he, Burwell?’

‘I have had no opportunity of judging,’ said Burwell
frostily. ‘Would you like your coat, Mr. Singleton?’

‘You can’t get rid of me so easy. They’re going to call
me in again. Clifton’s representing me legally, for the
moment, I insisted on legal representation,’ Singleton an-
nounced. ‘I may be a minor, but I know a few tricks. Old
Clifton admitted I was right. Pretty good old bird. Daresay
I’ll take him on permanently.’

Burwell here made a sovmd that was either a cough or a
snort. It was interrupted by a sharp ring of the doorbell.

A taxi-driver thrust his peaked cap into Burwell’s face.
A blast of wind from the icy river blew in, bringing with it
the words: ‘Joceleyn’s — this is Joceleyn’s all right, ain’t
it?’

Burwell admitted that it was, and reduced the opening
slightly.

The taxi-driver growled: ‘Well, keep it open. I got a

AERIVAL AT NIGHT

109

visitor for you,’ and went down the steps announcing to his
passenger, ‘O.K. Mister. This is the house. They tried
keeping the number a secret, but I hit it right, just the same.’

He came back again shortly with his hand on the arm of a
tall man.

‘One more step and there we are. I’ll bring the bags, sir.
Don’t trip over the mat, sir.’

‘I’m all right,’ the tall man said impatiently. He did not
take off his hat, a soft one, pulled down over his eyes. It
cast a shadow over the upper part of his face, but did not
conceal the two dark circles of glass that covered his eyes.
The collar of his tweed coat was turned up around his chin.
His right sleeve hung empty. He had a stick in the other
hand. He stood there leaning on it for a second, perhaps.
Then drew a long breath and said: ‘Burwell.’

It was hard, Diana thought, to tell whether it was a ques-
tion or a greeting.

There was a little pause. Then BurweU — she could hear
the breath catch in his throat - — held out his hand, saying,
‘Mr. Nick! Excuse me, sir. I didn’t recog — didn’t know
you were coming.’

The younger Nicholas Joceleyn, the only one now, did
not take the thick reddish hand that Burwell held out.

He said lightly, ‘I’m glad to — to see you, Burwell.’

For a moment Diana seemed to see, not the man who
spoke, but the figure that had dropped out of the clouds the
day of the eclipse. A voice in her head seemed to say, ‘But
he had on smoked glasses then too.’ And another voice
gasped, ‘Don’t let him be blind. Please don’t let him be
blind.’

He moved across the hall, with the cane tucked under his

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PAUL EBVERE SQUARE

arm, touched first the black-walnut hatrack, then the top
of the high-backed chair that stood beside it — a throne-like
chair of dark carving and faded red velvet — and sat down
in it.

‘Smells just the same,’ he said, smiling. It was a smile
that drew his mouth to one side, creased his cheek, deepened
what was almost a cleft in his chin. ‘Tea-leaves. You still
sweep the stair carpet with tea-leaves. And smoky Souchong,
I’ll bet. Polish the boots with Day and Martin’s? Right.
Dining-room table with linseed oil. Boiled linseed. And keep
russet apples in the storeroom?’

‘Yes, Mr. Nick. We do, sir.’

Burwell looked anxiously at the figure in the big chair,
then turned to the door through which the taxi-man was
now thrusting a number of bags. Their owner paid no atten-
tion to them, but lay back against the red velvet shivering.

Singleton Shatswell said: ‘I guess you don’t know me,
Nick. I was just a kid when you went away. Lots of people
don’t know me, on account of I’m six feet two now. How
you’ve grown, Singleton, they all say, but I’ve never choked
any of ’em yet.’

Nick Joceleyn said, ‘I’m having a little trouble with my
eyes. Sing. I can’t really see the full extent just now.’

He held out his left hand. Siugleton did his bone-crushing
operation on it. ‘Gosh, that’s too bad. Pinkeye, is it? I
had it myself last fall. There’s a lot of it around,’ he said.

Nick Joceleyn only said, ‘What a grip!’ He shook his
fingers into shape and added, ‘Leave me one hand, you
young brute.’

Burwell picked up the luggage that the driver had left
in the vestibule. Diana had been retreating slowly up the

ARRIVAL AT NIGHT

111

stairs. The idea that this was now her house and that she
ought to act as hostess in it did not occur to her. She still
felt like an intrusive stranger, and her only idea was to get
out of the way without its being obvious that she was doing
so. The result was that something like a procession took
place on the stairs: Diana walking ahead, trying not to
hurry; Nick Joceleyn moving quickly with his left hand
resting lightly on the stair rail; Burwell stumping after him
with a large box marked ‘FRAGILE’ under one arm, a
briefcase under the other, and a bag in his hand.

Nick Joceleyn talked gaily over his shoulder to Burwell.

‘Same old stair carpet, isn’t it, Burwell? Ink-spot — my
ink-spot ought to be three steps from the top. Is it still
there?’

‘Right under your foot, Mr. Nick.’

‘Why, so it is. Hope no one’s touched my room. The
most comfortable bed m the' world’s in that room. Has my
uncle come in? It must be almost time for him. Do they
still set the clocks in the Square by him?’

Diana was only a little way ahead of them, starting up
the next flight of stairs.

Burwell saw her.

‘Miss Diana,’ he said, ‘would you wait a minute, please?
This is Miss Diana, Mr. Nick. She’ll ’

Nick Joceleyn snatched off his hat. The white glare from
the hall chandelier fell full on his face, showing white patches
of hair near his temples, the dark stubble on his hollow cheeks,
the slender arched nose pinched with pain at the nostrils,
and 'the line of pain between the dark brows. The brilliance
of the smil e that he turned toward Diana was cancelled by
the two blank black circles of dark glass.

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PAUL EEVEBE SQUARE

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t — see you. How do you do?’

He dropped his hat and held out his left hand, saying in a
low, rapid tone that was a little like someone talking in his
sleep, ‘Nuisance, having only one hand,’ and then, as her
left hand touched his, ‘Extraordinary, how few people will
give you their left hand. Sort of intelligence test.’

His hand was hot and dry. Her brief contact with it
seemed to burn her, and yet there was about those strong
fingers an impersonality that was almost cold. He let her
hand go quickly, shivering as if it chilled him to touch it,
and said again, still in that rapid, sleep-walking tone: ‘You
didn’t tell me about my uncle, Burwell. When can I see
him, do you think? I have something for him, a box. Did
you see a box? Fragile. China clipper people said leave it.
Too much luggage. I said. All right. Leave somethmg else.
Clothes. Have to take the box. Fragile . . . Did you say he
hadn’t come in yet?’

Burwell said helplessly: ‘Your uncle, Mr. Nick — your
uncle’s — Miss Diana, would you — I can’t ’

He trudged up the next flight of stairs with the bags and
the box marked ‘fragile,’ leaving Diana to see the realization
of what Burwell meant etch the lines of pain deeper into
Nick Joceleyn’s face.

‘He’s not ’ He stepped back to the wall and leaned

against it. ‘He’s not ’ he repeated.

‘I’m sorry,’ Diana said gently. ‘He died Monday night.’

He stood silent for a moment. She could hear the clock on
the landing below them ticking off the seconds.

Then he said quietly and simply, ‘He was kind to me,
always,’ and after another brief pause, ‘Were you with
him?’

AEEIVAL AT NIGHT

113

‘Yes. He spoke of you. Almost the last thing he said
was, “Tell Nick — I knew he would win.”’

‘I wonder what he meant.’

‘I thought it must be something about China. He talked
about what you were doing there. Kept a map with pins
stuck in. Only that day I’d changed them for him.’

‘He was wrong, I’m afraid,’ Nick Joceleyn said. ‘About
China, or anything else.’ He spoke without bitterness in his
tone. Simply as if he were stating a fact, and then added,
this time with a tremor in his quiet voice, ‘I’m — sorry I
was too late.’

His voice changed suddenly to a confused mutter. He
seemed for a few moments to have lost the sense of where
he was. Out of the rapid flow of words she could recognize
only the phrase, repeated several times in that feverish tone:
‘I let him down. Aiter all he did for me, I let him down.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she said quietly, as his muttering stopped
for a second. ‘He didn’t think so. I know he didn’t.’

‘Is that true? ’ he asked. ‘Forgive me. But — everything
whirls so. I can’t tell just where . . . Are you close to me? ’

He put his hand out and she took it in hers.

‘Yes, I’m here,’ she said, feeling the heat of his hand run
along the nerves of her arm — a strange feeling, electric,
tingling. ‘Please believe me. I know he forgave you if
there was anything to forgive. He was proud of you. He
told me so.’

‘It sounds true. Your hand feels true. And kind.’ He let
it go, and said, speaking clearly and sensibly now: ‘But even
then I am too late. There was a report he asked for. I had
that at least. Clifton — I ought to see Clifton . . . ’

‘Mr. Clifton and your cousins are in the library.’

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

lU

‘Thank you/ he said. T’ll go down, then.^

As he moved down the stairs with his hand touching the
top of the black-walnut dado, she had the feeling that she
was seeing someone walking in his sleep.

i2

MATCHES

Follingsbt Clifton said: ‘Eben, let me remind you that
you are an executor of the will, unless you decline to act.’
So at last Eben Keith was silent. He sat on the edge of his
chair twisting and untwisting his cold fingers. Peter Lobanov
still lounged on the window-seat, but Bill Shatswell had
moved and was sitting on the arm of the sofa. He ran a large
red hand over his sleekly brushed brown hair. Sometimes he
moved his handsome puzzled blue eyes from the elaborately
perforated toes of his shoes to the lawyer’s face.

Bill’s thoughts moved slowly. Eben Keith’s moved fast.

He said: ‘Mr. Clifton — this residuary legatee business.
I think I’m entitled to ask for a statement from you. Will
there be anything left over? Will the bequests be paid in
full.?’

‘The bequests,’ Mr. Clifton snapped, ‘will be paid in full.
The amoimt in excess is somewhat uncertain. It depends
somewhat on the stock market. Somewhat on the winding-up
of the affairs of Joceleyn & Company. Those employees

116

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

who have been consulted have agreed to buy stock in the new
co-operative organization, but as your uncle is not here to
carry it through, there may be difficulties that have not been
anticipated. We might, for instance, have to take back a
larger amount of stock in the Company than we had ex-
pected, and its success under the new management is, of
course, not assured.’

Mr. Clifton had rattled off these remarks briskly. Now he
paused and snapped the rubber band around his papers
three times.

After this pizzicato passage he announced crisply, ‘Best
guess is, residuary estate, about a million.’

‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I must know whether you are to
act as executor.’

‘I shall not refuse to act,’ Eben said coldly and slowly,
but his mind was far ahead of his tongue. ‘It wouldn’t be
for the good of the family. That to me is paramount. My

mother ’ Then, seeing his cousins moving toward the

door, he said more quickly: ‘Don’t go, Bill. Stay a minute,
Peter. We ought to discuss things. You can go, Singleton.’

During Sing’s protests and final departure, sulking and
growling, Peter lounged back on the window-seat. Bill sat
on a table and examined his shoes again.

‘This is a serious matter,’ Eben said. ‘This money,
possibly a considerable sum, is left in the hands of an inex-
perienced girl. It was not like Uncle Nicholas to do any-
thing thoughtless. Obviously he did this with intention,
and although the will does not mention it, I believe his
purpose is clear.’

Peter looked at Eben sidewise and murmured: ‘That’s
because you’re so clever, Eben. It’s not clear to me.’

MATCHES

117

‘Obviously,’ Eben repeated, ‘be intended one of us to
marry her.’

Peter gave a short laugh. Mr: Clifton coughed. Bill
opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘If my imcle had this intention,’ Eben went on, ‘Mr.
Clifton may know it. There may even, I suppose, be a
message.’

‘There was no message,’ the lawyer said quietly.

‘Nevertheless,’ Eben said, ‘I think he can scarcely have
left her unprotected, a prey to fortune-hunters. It seems
clear that he intended one of us to marry her.’

‘Which^one?’ Peter asked in a tone that was not a favorite
of Eben’s.

‘That, of course,’ Eben said, ‘is for her to choose.’

The silence that followed was broken by BiH’s remarking,
‘She didn’t look the sort that’d yank a horse’s mouth.’

Eben Keith said: ‘So you’re a candidate, are you?’

Bill said slowly: ‘It’s only — the children. I’d like to
make a home for them. Mrs. Nesbitt’s awfully kind, of
course. But somebody younger ... If my uncle really
wanted it . . . But oughtn’t we to let Nick know? Because
he’d be the one, wouldn’t he, really?’

‘I suppose so,’ Eben said, without enthusiasm.

‘He wouldn’t come,’ Peter said from the window-seat.

Eben gave his short fox-bark of a laugh.

‘Oh, wouldn’t he? I’ll bet he’ll be enough interested in
Miss Diana Joceleyn and a million dollars to make better
time than when it was simply a question of my imcle’s Al-
ness and the business needing him .’

Peter said angrily, ‘Nick’s more mercenary than anyone
else, I suppose.’

IIS

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Nick Joceleyn said from the doorway : ‘It would be inter-
esting to know what you are talking about. Just vulgar
curiosity, of course.’

Peter spun around and ran forward, saying, ‘Nick, old
boy, when did you come.?’

‘Just now. Don’t break my arm again, my Prince. And
thanks for the defense of my character, which certainly needs
it. I am, of course, mercenary, as Eben suggests, but in a
nice way, I hope. Aren’t we all.?’

He moved slowly into the room with his left hand on
Peter’s arm.

Mr. Clifton said, ‘I’m glad to see you, Nick.’

Bill made hearty sounds of greeting and added: ‘Plane
took the bit in its teeth, I hear. Rotten luck, about your
arm.’

Eben Keith, whose pale face showed no signs of embarrass-
ment, said calmly: ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Nick. “Mer-
cenary” is Peter’s remark, not mine. You’re naturally
interested in Uncle Nicholas’s will, as we all are, and I see
no harm in having said so.’

Nick Joceleyn said: ‘Thank you, Mr. Clifton. Arm’s all
right practically. Bill. Thanks. Why, no harm at all, Eben.
I am, of course, interested in the will. Am, I to hear it, Mr.
Clifton.? Or can you teU me about it.? Too long to re-read,
probably.’

‘Your uncle, knowing that you were amply provided for,
left you only five thousand dollars to buy some remem-
brance, and his library, with the wish that you may enjoy
reading some of his and your old favorites.’

He summarized the rest of the will briefly.

Nick had reached the library table. He had picked up a

MATCHES

119

small elephant carved from a piece of white, red-flecked jade.
It rested in the palm of his left hand and he was rubbing his
fingers over it. The eyes of Nick Joceleyn’s cousins were all
turned on him as he listened, but his face told them nothing.
His mouth and eyebrows were still. The dark glasses hid
what his eyes might have betrayed. He kept on playing
with the jade elephant. Once he rubbed it against his
bristly cheek.

When the lawyer had finished reading, Nick put down the
elephant and said vaguely: T met someone on the stairs.
Was that — ?’

'Uncle Stephen’s daughter Probably/ Eben said crisply.
'Now, Nick, the point is — I’ve already been through this
once — we all feel sure that Uncle Nicholas intended one of
us to marry her.’ He paid no attention to Peter’s muttered
'What makes you think so? ’ and went on smoothly, outlining
his plan.

They must give Miss Joceleyn a chance to know them.
Entertain her. Take her about. After a suitable time had
elapsed, of course. It would be wise, probably, for each to
take a week at a time. Less confusing.

'We had better,’ he said, 'bind ourselves not to propose to
her until each has had his week, and then in inverse order.’

At this point Mr. Clifton gave that cough of his and
started toward the door.

'I hope you don’t feel that my uncle would have disap-
proved of Miss Joceleyn’s marrying one of us,’ Eben said.

'Not necessarily.’

'That means you think he wanted ’

'He left no instructions,’ the lawyer said, 'and imless you
need me to draw up a legal agreement, Eben, I’ll ask you to
excuse me.’

120

PAUL REVERE SQUARj

Eben said a legal agreement would not be necessary.

‘We can draw lots,’, be said. ‘Matches will do. A gentle
men’s agreement, of course.’

‘Of course!’ said Peter.

Eben broke matches into four diJfferent lengths. He helc
them with their pink tips sticking out between his thuml
and forefinger.

‘The weeks will be in order of their length,’ he said.

He pushed out his hand toward Peter, who did not look
at it.

‘Oh, our Prince isn’t interested,’ Eben said in his thin
cold voice. ‘Well, that’s all the better for the common
people. Your mother’ll like to know.^1 can guess why, can’t
you. Bill?’

‘No, I can’t,’ Bill said simply.

Peter got up, jerked a match from between Eben’s fingers,
and threw it in the fire.

‘It was short,’ he said. ‘You’d better draw. Bill. I can’t
see why he wants us to, but he’ll blackmail us into it evi-
dently. To be foils for him probably.’

Bill said slowly: ‘I don’t understand any of this, you
know. I don’t like rushing things this way.’ But he took a
match. It had been broken in halves.

‘Your turn, Nick,’ Eben said.

Nick Joceleyn straightened his tall figure and stood up.

‘There’s excellent precedent for drawing lots, no doubt,’
he said quietly, ‘but I’m afraid I’m not a competitor.’

Eben Keith could not quite keep the note of relief out of
his voice. He tried to make his ‘‘That’s interesting. 'Why
not?’ sound casual, but he failed.

The casualness was Nick’s as he said lightly: ‘I’m afraid
I’m scarcely eligible. I’m blind.’

PROPOSAL

Burwell had said from the third-floor landing, ‘ Could you
come up a moment, Miss Diana? ’ and he had started up the
stairs. She had not seen Nick Joceleyn feel his way toward
the library door, but she had heard it open and Eben Keith’s
shrill voice saying: ‘Interested . . . Diana Joceleyn . . . mill ion
dollars . . . ’ had traveled clearly up the stairs.

Peter Lobanov’s voice had been thick with anger, but the
words, ‘Nick’s more mercenary than anyone else,’ had
thrust themselves into her unwilling consciousness.

Burwell’s usually pink face had a gray look as he said:
‘Excuse me, Miss Diana, asking you to come up. I didn’t
want Mr. Nick to hear. It’s about his room . . . ’

‘Oh,’ Diana said hastily. ‘I didn’t think. I’m sleeping
there, of course. I’ll move.’

‘Minna and I will move your things. It was only to get
your permission. We put you in that room when you came
because the guest-room was over Mr. Joceleyn’s. He is —
he was always troubled by anyone walking over his head.’

122

PAUL REVBBE SQUAE

She would miss the room, with its model airplanes and tl
pictures of school teams on the walls, Diana thought. Si
had become quite fond of some of the plump-cheeked boyis
faces that kept turning up in the pictures. Nick Joceleyn
thin one never really looked at her. He was always gazin
abstractedly somewhere else. The pictures gave very littl
clue as to how he would look without his glasses.

(Don’t let him be blind! Please don’t let him be blind!

She felt tired and dizzy as she went out, leaving Burwel
and Minna conspiring, eagerly and pantingly, to clear Mi
Nick’s room without letting him know they were doing it
and to make as little trouble as possible for Miss Diana.

There was something pathetic about this eagerness
Nicholas Joceleyn’s death had cast the shadow of a moving
finger over their complacency. The shadowy finger itsel
touched them lightly, but always on some exposed nerve
It aroused uncomfortable thoughts ... In Minna: I’m old . .
Fat . . . People like stylish parlormaids . . . Where shall 1
go? . . . The legacy.? Yes, it will feed me, but . . . This is my
home . . . such a comfortable dining-room . . . red cloth on
the table . . . tea stewing on the range . . . Twenty years . . .
And only one in the family — except when Mr. Nick came . . .

Visions, terrible visions, of families of three, four, or —
indecent — even five, passed through her mind. She saw
mountains of dishes to wash, the print of muddy feet on the
stair carpet. Skis in the vestibule. Dogs. Dogs not thor-
oughly house-broken . . . Cats with long hair that came off
on the seats of chairs. Lighted cigarettes on mahogany
tables. Ashes on rugs. Smoke in curtains. Glasses that left
sticky rings on the mantelpiece . . .

‘We’ll impack now for Mr. Nick, Minna.’

PROPOSAL

123

‘Yes, Mr. Burwell. Right away.’

Not to be, Burwell thought, Mr. Nicholas Joceleyn’s
man ... Not to live in the shadow of the State House . . .
People with names very nearly as good as Joceleyn lived in
the suburbs now. And went to the mountains in the summer.
Not the beach. Mountains. Not a yard of concrete within
three miles. Movies and church ten miles away. Cows.
Not another butler in the place. Poison ivy. Black flies.

‘That will do, Minna. I’ll send Sarah. You and she can
attend to the linen.’

‘Yes, Mr. Burwell.’

His legs ached worse than ever on the stairs. Miss Diana’s
voice came from the drawing-room. The porcelain room, Mr.
Joceleyn had called it. Most of the china was there, though
it overflowed into every room in the house.

‘I’d like to speak to you a minute, please, Burwell.’

‘Yes, Miss Diana.’

(Had it come? Was she going to give notice? . . . Suburbs
. . . Mountains . . . Cocktails . . . )

She was standing near one of the cabinets with a book in
her hand. She looked very small and slight in the dim room
with its chests and cupboards and high dark windows. The
dim light in the ceiling brought out the gold in her hair, but
darkened the shadows imder her eyes.

‘I wanted you to know, Burwell, that I’d be glad to have
things go on as usual here for the present. Unless you have
other plans.’

(No mountains ... no poison ivy ... no hay fever . . . Tre-
mont Street . . . The Esplanade on hot evenings . . . )

‘Thank you, Miss Diana. I’m sure we would all be glad
to be of assistance.’

124

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

He bowed solemnly and went out, but his steps were quick
on the stairs. The ache in his legs had miraculously vanished.

Diana went back to her study of porcelain. She tried to
keep her mind on the colored pictures in the book and find
something like them in the cabinet, but the words she had
heard when the library door opened kept thrusting them-
selves into her mind.

‘Miss Diana Joceleyn . . . million dollars . . . Nick . . . mer-
cenary.’

Why were her name and his and a million dollars being
linked together not only in Eben Keith’s shrill voice, but in
Peter Lobanov’s? She would not think about it, she decided
firmly.

‘No blue so beautiful as that of the Ming porcelains . . .
(I wonder if that blue-and-white jar is Ming. How did he
get here so quickly? Must have flown. China clipper. China
— oh, yes . . . ) Is that famille rose? Well, it’s pink . . . What
a help I’d be to students of porcelain . . . ’

Someone came upstairs three steps at a time. Singleton
Shatswell bounced into the room and shut the door behind
him.

‘Look here,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘Look here.
They can’t make a monkey out of me. I’m his nephew as
much as any of them. Suppose I am a little younger. Why,
my mother’s two years older than my father. I’m almost
seventeen. You thought, yourself, I was nearly twenty.
You don’t look more than twenty. Practically you’re no
older than I am. You could give me a chance, couldn’t
you? I mean at least you wouldn’t cross me off the list
right off, would you? Because you’re the only girl I ever saw
I liked the looks of. I’m getting through school in June and

PBOPOSAL

• 125

I won’t go to college. I’ll go to work. Get a job tasting tea.
Uncle Nicholas said himself once I have the Joceleyn palate.
How does a college education help your palate, I ask you.?
I wouldn’t care about your money. I’d work. Million or no
million. And after all I’m six feet two.’

For this outburst Diana found no answer, and Singleton
went on breathlessly.

‘They wouldn’t have to pay me a million to marry you,
believe Tree.’

‘Just who is being paid to marry me?’ Diana asked
frostily.

‘Why, no one exactly. But someone has to protect you.
Uncle Nicholas wanted them to, Eben says. Eben protect
anyone! That’s a laugh! Nick left the door open and I
heard it. I wouldn’t have listened only they had no business
to shove me out in the hall. I’m his nephew, I guess, just
as much as E. Joceleyn Keith, the louse.’

‘Do you think you ought to have told me? I wouldn’t
have let you, if I’d known what it was about.’

Singleton kicked at the rug with one of his number twelve
feet and growled: ‘Oh, I suppose not, but I was mad, and it
made me sick to hear Eben being so virtuous. And I — I
couldn’t very well ask you to marry me without explaining,’
he added reasonably. Seeing that Diana was apparently
giving most of her attrition to a green-and-pink jar he went
on : ‘ All I thought was you might put me on the list. Because
of course you don’t know me much yet. Besides, gosh, a
girl ought to know what goes on. You’re not a sack of
potatoes.’

Diana looked up into Singleton’s scowling face. There
was something besides the scowl, something behind the

126

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

thick glasses that kept her from laughing. She realized that
the sulky look was a disguise for a genuine kindliness.

She said: ‘Thank you, Singleton. I’m not planning to
marry anyone at present, but if I had a list, you’d be on it.’

The result of this speech was that Singleton again dis-
closed the dental conspiracy against the individuality of his
front teeth, and began snapping his fingers in a series of
reports slightly less noisy than a machine gun.

‘So that makes four of us. And I’m one of them, Mr. E.
Joceleyn Keith, even if you did say I was a minor and shoved
me out. I’ll show you whether I still play with a bucket and
spade.’

‘Four of you,’ Diana said lightly.

‘Yes. They were drawing matches. “Mine’s the short
match,” Peter said. Matches to see which would have the
first week taking you out. Four, counting me. Because
Nick’s not a candidate. I don’t know why. Perhaps he’s
got another girl in China. It’s likely, of course,’ Singleton
said with a worldly air; then, seeing that Diana did not look
especially responsive, he went on, shufliing his large feet
uneasily: ‘Suffering sculpms! I hope you’re not mad with
me for listening — it was only ’

‘No, I’m not,’ Diana said, moving toward the door.
‘You’re the first person who ever proposed to me.’

She slipped out of the door and was halfway upstairs be-
fore Singleton recovered enough to remark: ‘Cataleptic
codfish! I don’t believe it.’

DARKNESS

She had not meant to cry. Her father had hated tears.
She had shed none over his death, although at times she
longed for the sort of grief that is easily expressed and as
easily healed; for the Celtic ability to throw an apron over
the face, bawl and blubber behind it, emerge tear-stained
and ready for a good meal of spare-ribs and cabbage.

Sobs and moans had ascended frequently from the kitchen
during the last three days. Now the smell of cabbage and
frying pork rose peacefully in their place. What there was
about that smell to send the tears rolling down her cheeks,
Diana could not possibly have told. She knew only that
her fantastic weeks in Paul Revere Square had been too
much for her.

She had made a friend and lost him. She had arrived with
$2.17 in her pocket and now had a million dollars tied around
her neck. It couldn’t really be a million, could it? — not
after all the other enormous sums he had given away; but
anyway people seemed to think it was . . . She had been

128

PAUL KEVEEE SQUARI

patronized by a Russian Princess and told that with the
right training she could undoubtedly make six hundred
dollars a year selling cinnamon toast and whimsical door-
stops. She had learned the names of three pieces of porcelain
and now owned one of the great collections of the country
and was to ‘make it available to students.’ Well, she could
put the green pieces in one room and the blue in the other,
she supposed.

Four men were drawing lots to see which would be the
one to marry her, and, although one of them wasn t a
competitor,’ the others seemed to think a million dollars
would make it worth while. She hated them hated them
all. Eben Keith with his cold hands and eyes and cold
politeness. That handsome one, as handsome as a doll
Bill Shatswell it must be. So pink and scrubbed and glossy
and sleek. He’d looked at her out of those long-lashed eyes
— sapphire marbles, that’s what they looked like — as if
she were a horse that was in the wrong stall. Only of course
he would have been more interested in a horse. Talked to it
probably . . .

Before the will was read, no one had paid any attention
to her. Even Peter Lobanov, who had been so friendly the
other day, had hardly looked at her. He had lounged in
behind his mother looking like a sleepy kitten and had spent
all his time staring out of the window.

Probably he was thinking up one of his revolting pictures.

And Nick Joceleyn. There was no reason for him to
remember her — a blackberry-stained child with pig-tails —
but for those moments on the stairs she had felt that they
knew each other; xmderstood each other. And now — it was
foolish, she knew, to let that phrase ‘not a competitor’

DARKNESS

129

wound her, and yet it did. It hurt even while she said to
herself: ‘I’m glad he’s not like the others. Glad.’ She did
not know why it hurt, did not know why her sobs could not
entirely drown the voice in her brain that still said, ‘Don’t
let him be blind.’

Sobs shook her to sleep at last, but it was a disturbed
sleep full of strange dreams, blurred fantasies for the most
part, but among them one that in its very actuality and
commonplaceness was stranger than any of them. She
dreamed that someone was in the room: a room like an ice-
chest, white and cold. There was a burning hand that
touched first her ankle, minutes later her shoulder.

There was nothing frightening about the touch and it was
followed by an enveloping warmth that made her give one
long shivering sob and plunge deep over her head into the
well of sleep. The plunge could not have lasted long. She
emerged from it while it was still night, realized that she was
s till wearing the dress that she had worn at the funeral, that
she was lying on the white dimity bedspread — a capital
offense, no doubt, in Paul Revere Square — and that she
had somehow managed to cover herself with a down puff.

‘I must have done it in my sleep,’ she thought. ‘That
dream. That cold room. Then the warmth. But what
waked me? I thought I heard something.’

There was a moment of silence. Then she heard it again.
It was the sound of footsteps, slow steps that seemed to halt
and stumble. They stopped, began again. Came nearer,
moved farther away. Then came a faint sound, half-groan,
half-sob. Another pause. Then again the halting steps and
the low sound of pain. It came, she knew now, from Nick
Joceleyn’s room across the hall.

130

PAUL REVERE SQUAR

She got up and turned on her light. Her door was oper
she found to her surprise. That was why she had heard th
steps and could still hear them. She stood by the door ir
resolutely for a moment. Was he ill, needing help? Or wa
this stifled groan, like her own tears, something that was hi
own business? Needing only the healing of privacy and th<
dark.

At that moment came the crash. She hurried across th(
hall and knocked ^t the door, felt almost unreasonably re-
lieved as his voice said, ‘Come in, please.’

‘Can I help you?’ she asked, and switched on the light,
He was on his knees near the desk. He was still dressed.
There was a wet bandage over his eyes where the dark glasses
had been. A lamp with a glass shade was in pieces around
him. Ink dripped from an overturned bottle.

Diana rescued the ink-bottle, went to work with blotting
paper, began picking up the broken glass, all in silence.

Nick Joceleyn murmured absently, ‘Mayflowers/ and then
began to speak in his rapid, toneless way.

‘I’m sorry to bother you. Very sorry. Codeine. I had
some somewhere. Looking for it. I’ve been having a bit of
trouble with my eyes. Cornea and iris inflamed, ship’s doctor
said. Gets rather painful sometimes. At night, specially, or
seems so. Perhaps not — anything’s worse when you have
more time to think.’

He did not wait for her answer, but went on more slowly,
‘You were here, you said? I wish I had been. No use to him
— ever.’

‘That was not the idea I got from hearing him talk about
you,’ Diana said quietly. ‘He wanted to see you. He had
planned to cable you to meet him in Hawaii. He missed you.
You don’t miss people who are no use.’

DAEKNESS

131

‘Thank you,’ he said, and in a voice that for a moment had
resonance in it. Tt’s kind of you to say that.’

Then he fell again into that feverish, toneless mutter.

‘Kind. She had kind eyes — like a young fawn. But
they wouldn’t let her go up in the plane. Pretty sunk about
it. I could tell. Plucky kid, though. Managed a smile. Told
her I’d come back. Well, I have . . . ’

His hand was bleeding, she saw. He must have cut it on a
piece of the lampshade. He had smeared ‘‘he bandage again
with it. She brought gauze and surgeon’s tape and bound up
the gash. While she was doing so, he fell again into quick,
monotonous speech.

‘Knew you had to turn out of this room. Found it out.

Clever, even if I can’t Did you ever hear footsteps,

padding softly? Three pairs of feet, not pacing together?
Like a tiger and a half trotting? To go to sleep with a tiger
and half a tiger coming up softly behind — you mustn’t do
it, because of the claws. But here it’s safe. Mayflowers . . .
no tigers creeping through the mayflowers.’

The last words were hardly whispered. Then he said
clearly and sensibly: ‘If I had that Codeine. Burwell could
find it.’

Burwell, too, had been awakened by the crash of the lamp.
He appeared correctly dressed in morning coat and striped
trousers with a dizzy pajama jacket of purple with green pin-
wheels for a shirt. As if to atone for the frivolity of his night
attire, his manner was particularly formal.

He surveyed the mess on the floor as if he suspected Diana
of a clandestine game of prisoner’s base, and said, with splen-
did calm:

‘Thank you. Miss Diana. I will take care of everything.’

132

PAUL REVERE SQUAI

Diana shut the door and went back to her room.

She still felt the touch of his burning hand in her finge
tips. Still heard the note of pain in his voice. She did n<
need to hear what he was saying to Burwell. She knew a
ready, without being told, that he was blind. Yet even in h
blindness he had not forgotten the day of the eclipse. An
he had come back.

‘Here is the Codeine/ Burwell said. ‘Shall I send fc
Doctor Lomond.^’

*'In the morning will be plenty of time. This isn’t the firs
of these nights.’

T wish — if it isn’t too inquisitive, Mr. Nick, that you’<
tell me what’s wrong with your eyes.’

‘Do you really want to hear, Burwell? It’s not ver;;
pretty — some of it.’

‘Never mind, sir. If you’d rather not say.’

‘There were those feet, Burwell, tiger feet. All over th(
town — behind me . . • ’

REPUTATION UNTARNISHED

Nick Joceleyn was aleeady at the breakfast table when
Diana came down. His feverish look of the night before had
gone. He was sitting quietly with the tanned fingers of his
bandaged left hand touching the handle of his coffee-cup.
His dark glasses were turned on Paul Revere Square; on the
swirling snowflakes that heaped themselves on Paul’s hat and
along the iron railing. The lines of bitterness were more
clearly etched than ever around his mouth. His chin was
shaved, but he had scraped a raw place on his jaw. It had
bled and he had transferred a smear of blood to his coUar.

Diana saw all this from the doorway before he said, ‘ Some-
one came downstairs, Burwell,’ and Burwell answered, Tt’s
Miss Diana, sir,’ and bustled through the swing door, leaving
them alone.

The feeling of pity — it had been that last night and must
be the same feeling now — almost choked her, but she man-
aged to speak calmly, quietly. He stood up, walked to her
chair and pulled it out for her with his bandaged hand.

134

PAUL BEVEJRE SQU^

‘I’m not much good at shoving it in, I’m afraid,’ he se
and she said hastily, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

He stood there for a moment. She could see him in the (
mirror. He was looking down at the top of her head and
was smiling. It was as if he had touched her, but he mo^
away, guiding himself back to his place by a casual finger
the edge of the table.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t see the eclipse,’ he said.

He was still smiling and the bitterness had gone from 1
face.

‘Do you remember me.^^’

‘The pixie in the middy blouse and the Rapunzel hai
Of course I remember you. Have they cut

‘No.’

‘Do you look the same?’

‘No. I hope not.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gi'avely. ‘I’d have liked to remember

That was the nearest they came to speaking of his blinc
ness. Burwell came back then. Nick went upstairs whistlin
soon afterward. It was Burwell who told her what had hap
pened to his eyes. Burwell, also, who, with much circumlocu
tion, told her that she must have a chaperone, ‘because
there was no getting around it,’ the Square would talk.

‘I should think Hannah and Minna and Sarah would b(
chaperones enough,’ Diana said and went down to the
kitchen. She ordered the kind of lunch and dinner she
thought a man would like. Hannah raised her reddish-gray
eyebrows. Steak was expensive, she said. She did not hold
with potatoes wrapped in pink tissue paper. Folks might do
that in Idaho, she said darkly, making the tubers of that
region seem distinctly disreputable. Yes, peas were in the

REPUTATION UNTARNISHED

13 ^

market. But high. She had planned on parsnips. Lemon
pie was too rich for an invalid. Yes, it was true Mr. Nick
liked it. Being a man. (Evidently being a man was a fail-
ing, still Hannah’s tone seemed to condone it in this case.)
She used to make lemon pie for him when he came home
from school. But a nice tapioca cream . . .

If I give in now, Diana thought, it’s forever . . .

'Peas. French fried potatoes if you don’t think the others
are practical. Lemon pie. And a meringue like that.''

She illustrated a space of about four inches and tempered
her firmness with a flicker of the dimple. Hannah succumbed.

'Seeing it’s for Mr. Nick,’ she agreed.

Something faintly like a smile touched the corners of her
tight lips, but she subdued it and assumed her usual air of
belligerence.

'I’ll be needing lemons, then,’ she observed with the weary
sigh of one by whom lemons are procured only by going on
foot to California and picking them off a tree.

‘I’ll get some. Eight away,’ Diana said briskly and her
feet went twinkling up the stairs.

Hannah gazed after her gloomily.

'Lemon meringue. And the funeral only yesterday. It’s
hardly decent. There’s strange things going on in this house.
Mark my words, this will lead to no good.’

The little kitchenmaid opened her wide gray eyes even
wider. A delicious shiver ran down her spine. Perhaps life
in Paul Revere Square, which up to this moment had failed
singularly to correspond with life as she had seen it flicker
across the silver screen, was going to show some of the excite-
ment she had been led to expect in America.

'Is it gangsters you mean? Or poison?’ she inquired hope-
fully.

136

PAUL REVEKE SQUARE

‘It is not,’ her aunt replied, consigning gangsters and
poison to a deserved inferiority with a horizontal sweep of
her bony hand. ‘It’s worse. Ifs matrimony’

‘I t.binlc ’ began the little kitchenmaid, but Hannah

informed her that she was not paid to think. Instead she
could get out the flour and sift it four times.

‘Will I make the pastry?’

‘You will not, Bridget Concannon. There’ll be no thump-
ing with the rolling pin on this pastry. It’s in flakes it’s
going to be that would make the snowflakes think shame to
themselves.’

‘I wouldn’t see why. Since you’ve no liking for Mr. Nick.’

‘And who told you I’d none. Miss Concannon from BaUy-
shannonP — Get me a lump of ice. It needs be the bigness of
half a pullet’s egg ’

Bridget brought the ice and persisted boldy: ‘Is it Miss
Diana you’re against, then. Aunt Hannah? Didn’t I be
hearing you say last night you were glad she was in it in place
of that long-nosed Princess?’

Hannah was not cornered into admitting any sentimental
kindliness.

She saved face in the traditional way of the older genera-
tion.

‘It’s too young you are to understand,’ she announced.
‘Bring me that chilled butter off the ice and don’t be pester-
ing me. It’s quiet nerves anyone needs making pastry.’

Nick Joceleyn made his way to the sofa imder the window
in his room and lay down. The snow had stopped now and
there was bright sun poining into the room, but he did not
see it. He felt its warmth, though. And for a moment he took

REPUTATION UNTARNISHED

1S7

off his glasses and looked toward the light. Hope that some-
time the gray world in which he lived might brighten died
hard. Evidently this was not the day. The sun made a glim-
mer that was not quite brightness on the gray monotone
around him. It seemed to be trying to break through a thick
fog, but instead of lightening his darkness it only started up
the pain. He cupped his hands over his eyes and the gray
darkened to black — a black that had little spurts of flame
and stars shooting across it: electric signs, too, that went on
and off, on and off.

At last they died down and the pain faded with them. He
kept his hands over his eyes and looked into the velvet black-
ness. It was soothing, like the sound of cool water slipping
over marble, like Diana’s voice. A silver voice. From a girl
hung with gold.

He saw her against the black velvet. There was a gold
crown on her head.. Gold dripped from her ears and clasped
her proud neck. There was a wide girdle of it around her
waist. Her wrists and' fingers were heavy with it. (Only she
had kind, clever hands and moved them lightly.) The wide
gold bands about her ankles made her feet slide along slowly.
Slowly. Her dress was cloth of gold. It shimmered when she
moved. Little gold bells tinkled along the swaying hem.

‘But not gold,’ he thought, still cupping his thin brown
hands over his eyes. ‘No one has real gold. It came out of
the ground and is buried in it again. So dress her in ten-
doUar bills, then.’

He began to see her again. In green, of course. Crisp, cool
green and white that crackled and rustled. Silvery green and
white. Like a spring meadow with daisies m the long grass.
The wind slides over it and the green waves chase each other

138

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

over the hill. There is silver on their crests. In her hands
are mayflowers.

Mayflowers. His mind hung on the word. That was the
fragrance, the cool, clean sweetness that hung around her as
she moved. Strangely he was still breathing it here in his old
room. It had no business in his room, the bare room with
the black-framed football and baseball groups on the wall.
Yet it was there, as definitely as the familiar things that his
fingers found : the iron bed with its brass knobs, the golden-
oak chest of drawers, the leather-covered couch on which he
was lying.

He heard steps on the stairs. Hastily he uncupped his eyes,
shoved on his glasses, stood up, faced the window as if he
were looking out over the familiar clutter of roofs and chim-
ney-pots toward the garden. He whistled cheerfully, casually
jingled coins in his pocket with the fingers of his good hand.
He thrust the other back into the dangling triangle of black
silk. He needed the sling very little now. It served as an
excuse for his clumsiness; took people’s attention off his eyes.

His impersonation of a lazy, cheerful man with money in
his pocket, enjoying the white-trimmed trees after the storm
was wasted.

The footsteps were Burwell’s as he recognized before the
butler panted: ‘Doctor Lomond, Mr. Nick. Shall I ask him
up?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Nick Joceleyn said, and then, hearing
Burwell move toward the door, he added: ‘Not so fast,
Glenn Cunningham. A word with you. Why didn’t you
tell me I was turning Miss Joceleyn out of her room? It
didn’t matter where I slept.’

‘Did she tell you, sir?’

REPUTATION UNTARNISHED

139

^No, she did not, sir. The nose, one of the few pleasures of
the blind, told me. She left a trail of arbutus behind her. I
am blind, but a beagle. I give tongue on the scent.''

T’m sorry, sir ’

‘Grief is unnecessary. An answer to a question or two
makes all whole. When did Miss Joceleyn come here.f^^

‘It would be about three weeks ago, sir. Or perhaps four. I
could tell by referring to my diary.'

‘I didn’t know you kept a diary, Burwell. You terrify me.
I hope my past is not too accurately recorded. That time I
took the mince pie off the Keiths’ kitchen window-sill and
substituted for it a rice pudding from the Pophams. You
would have been mentioning that, Burwell? ’

‘Er ’

‘Never mind. We can’t go into all the possibilities of black-
mail. Too many. What I was going to ask was, how long
will Miss Joceleyn be staying.’

‘Why, indefinitely, sir. Didn’t Mr. Clifton tell you?
Your uncle named her residuum legatee and it included the
house which he asked her to live in and take care of the por-
celain, make a kind of museum out of it. Didn’t Mr. Clifton
tell you, sir?’

‘He may have. I remember she was made the residuary
legatee. I was a little confused last evening. . . . I’ll see
Doctor Lomond now, if he doesn’t mind coming up.’

He put his hands over his eyes again. The electric signs
began to drop red and gold balls into gaudy patterns and
roll them away again. After a moment of this he made a
sound, hardly a groan, little more than a clearing of his throat.

He fell to whistling again:

*A wandering minstrel I,

A thing of shreds and patches . . /

140

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

His whistle embroidered the gaiety and sweetness of the air
with trills and runs.

‘Sounds cheerful/ Doctor Lomond said, stumping up the
stairs.

‘Yes, sir, sounds cheerful,’ Burwell agreed.

Doctor Lomond’s quick ear caught the slight emphasis on
sounds.’

‘Whistling to keep his courage up, you mean?’

‘Something of the sort.’

‘Don’t worry about him, Burwell. I’ll look after him.’

* ... To every passion changing
I’ll tune my supple song ’

went the whistle cheerfully.

‘Don’t worry,’ repeated Doctor Lomond. ‘I’ll — I’ll Gil-
bert-and-Sullivan him. He won’t fool me, much.’

He puffed on upstairs toward the gay music.

Diana, hurrying through Paul Revere Square with a bag of
lemons in her hand, met a trim figure in black admirably re-
lieved by scarlet and a brace of Russian wolfhounds.

Princess Lobanov, who was in a mood of Slavic melancholy
this morning, gave her niece a sad, slow smile.

Twisting a thong of scarlet leather around her wrist, the
Princess addressed her companions: ‘Peace, Boris. Peace,
Sasha, my little darlings.’

She added some words that may very possibly have been
Russian, but the dogs continued to strain on the leash and
struggle toward Paul Revere’s iron railing. Perhaps they
did not understand Russian, Diana thought. They did not
look over-intellectual.

‘You shall be flogged, then, my little white angels/

REPUTATION UNTARNISHED

141

The Princess applied the end of a scarlet whip that hung
from her wrist to the dogs’ narrow shoulders. They seemed
to understand this language and stood still, gazing wistfully
at the statue and the snowy oval behind the black railing.
To their vague eyes it probably looked like a frosty Siberian
waste. Possibly Paul Revere’s horse was a wolf. It was prob-
ably as much like a wolf as anything they were likely to en-
counter. There is little wolf-hunting in Paul Revere Square.

‘It is lovely,’ the Princess said, turning on her Slavic smile
again, ‘to meet anything so young, so gay on this gray morn-
ing. Oh, I know it’s sunny now, after the storm,’ she added,
seeing a puzzled lift of Diana’s right eyebrow, ‘but I mean
nothing so obvious. A grayness is in the heart. There’s a
feeling — it sweeps over me sometimes — of a brooding
immensity, an intensity of appallingness, quite independent
of the ordinary world.’

She put a hand of flexible steel through Diana’s arm and
paced along the sidewalk, looking out to the river with an
air of brooding mystery. The dogs strained forward. Prin-
cess Lobanov’s steps grew faster. As she still kept her clutch
on Diana’s arm, Diana’s steps quickened too. Before long
they found themselves by the river which was not in the least
where Diana longed to be.

‘She’ll start to run, like the Red Queen,’ Diana thought.
‘My hair will come down and fly out behind. The bag will
burst. The lemons will go rolling, rolling . . . ’

The Princess, however, calmed the dogs with a flick of the
scarlet whiplash. They gazed vaguely at the river. There
were white fingers of ice pushing out into its faint steel blue,
Gulls wheeled and swooped or stood, looking like chunks of
ice, on the ice itself.

142

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

‘To be a gull. To be free/ murmured the Princess. ‘Have
you felt it? That longing for wings.’

Diana said she had and made a movement to release her
arm, but it was a gentle and polite movement. Consequently
it had no effect, except to tighten the Princess’s steel gauntlet.

‘We are going to be great friends, you and I,’ she an-
nounced. ‘I love youth. I understand its divine discontent.
I know — who knows better? — that fierce beating of the
wings against the cage. To beat the wings, to thrust the
thorn into the heart so that one may sing, to toss the cap
over the windmill,’ sighed the Princess, leaping lightly from
one image to the next, ‘to chase the end of the rainbow —
that is youth.’

She delivered this diagnosis with such a thrusting of sharp
fingers into Diana’s forearm that it took some courage for
Diana to say quietly: ‘I suppose some young people are like
that, but I’m afraid I’m a very conventional, ordinary per-
son, Aunt Sophia, without any interesting ideas or feelings.’

The Princess gave a curious little laugh.

‘It can scarcely be called conventional to welcome Nick
Joceleyn — a man with his reputation — into what I believe
is now your house and to live with him there, unchaperoned.
Of course you do not care how it looks. But that is youth.
As I was saying,’ she added charitably. Her tone lost its
romantic note and changed to one of finished suavity as she
went on; ‘Don’t take this as criticism, dear Diana. Naturally
your morals are of the purest, but you must send Nick away
or — how stupid of me not to think of it before — come and
stay with me. He’s such a butterfly. He’ll flit to another
flower before long. Now that’s settled. I won’t take no for
an answer. Your room will be ready this evening,’

EEPUTATION UNTAENISHED

143

Diana succeeded this time in releasing her arm. She looked
pale as she faced her aunt, who stood with a smile on her
scarlet lips, swinging the scarlet whip, with the lids drooping
over her icy-green eyes.

‘Uncle Nicholas wanted me to live in his house,’ Diana
said in a low tone. ‘It’s kind of you to be so interested. Aunt
Sophia, but I’m afraid I can’t accept. And I must be getting
back. Hannah needs these lemons.’

Princess Lobanov merely shrugged her shoulders. She had
an instinct for knowing when she had made a wrong move
and a formidable ability for extricating herself from embar-
rassing situations. She remarked, ‘ Come, my silver pigeons,’
and strolled off along the river, a picture of calm elegance.

Diana was far from calm as she hurried back to Paul
Revere Square. Her cheeks had turned pink again. She
kicked with unnecessary violence at a lump of snow and sent
its fragments scattering over a patch of sanded ice.

The words, ‘a man of his reputation,’ burned in her mind
and her thoughts were faster than her feet.

‘I don’t care what his reputation is. I won’t turn him out
to please her ... A room all ready! There wasn’t any room
ready when Father died. Or when Uncle Nicholas died.
She came and told me to run a tea-shop. It’s that awful
million . . .’

Had Peter told his mother how Eben had planned to ‘pro-
tect ’ her?

‘A man of his reputation,’ nagged at her ears again. Once
more she said she didn’t care and the whole cycle spun again
through her brain.

A taxi le^t the steps of her uncle’s house — her house —
and drove past her. There were bags and a square box piled

144

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

on the front seat beside the driver. From the back Nick
Joceleyn’s dark glasses turned their blank stare on her.

The weight of the lemons split the bag. They rolled
crazily on the sidewalk. It seemed hardly worth while to
pick them up, but she did. The taxi slithered and crtmched
its way out of the Square. Its impatient toot at the corner
stung her ears. She had recaptured the last lemon — and, of
course, her reputation.

DETECTIVE METHODS

Peter Lobanov had not told his mother anything. He had
shut himself into his studio and was painting, in a mood of
exasperation, an old root that looked a little like a snake, a
little like a gorilla — and a little like a root. It looked more
lilce a gorilla when Peter finished it — a gorilla with snake-
like arms brilliant with bangles from Woolworth’s.

The Princess knew better than to try to find things out
from Peter. Her son had a way of freezing under questioning
into a sullen coldness.

The Princess had a method more efficient than goading
Peter. She sent for Boris and Sasha. When the young giant
in pale blue brought the dogs, the Princess talked to him for
a while. The giant, a simple soul, told all he knew and did not
know that he had told. It is not strange that he was in
Princess Lobanov’s hands a wax disk easily played with a
suitable needle. But how did Mikhail, as the Princess called
him, get his information?

A mystery?

146

PAUL REVEEE SQUARE

Hardly.

Mikhairs name on alternate Thursdays and Sundays out,
and whenever he happened to be walking the wolfhounds
around the Square was Michael Connor. He came from
Ballyshannon. He and the little kitchenmaid at Mr. Joce-
leyn’s had been to school together. Although Bridget Con-
cannon was probably the best chaperoned girl in Paul Revere
Square, or in Boston, or in the United States for that matter,
she did manage, in spite of her three aunts and Burwell, to
post letters well down toward the end of the Square at about
the same hour in the evening that Michael Connor’s long blue
legs followed the long white legs of Sasha and Boris toward
the lamp-post on which a paternal government had thought-
fully placed an olive-green box.

Anyone who thinks that box to be of an unromantic ap-
pearance must throw away that notion and see it with
Bridget Concannon’s eyes as she lifts the lid, drops in a home-
sick letter to Ballyshannon, and then gazes up several feet
into the darkly handsome face of Michael Connor. He hap-
pens — surprise! surprise! — to be leaning against the lamp-
post, a splendid figure in pale blue and silver. He has a cape
of blue with a crimson lining flung over his wide shoulders.
The big white dogs, ‘with the heads like serpents on them
entirely,’ to quote Miss Concannon, whimper and shiver and
yank at the scarlet leash.

Michael says: ‘Quiet now, Sasha mavoumeen. Boris,
acushla,’ in his warm, slow voice, and the dogs are changed
into statues carved out of snow.

Bridget has undergone a transformation, too. This is not
the Bridget we saw sobbing, with her apron over her head,
because her fried eggs were rated less succulent than the

DETECTIVE METHODS

147

soles of old sneakers. Neither is it the patient little pony who
trots from ice-chest to cupboard, to stove, to table, as her
majestic aunt wields the rolling pin and speaks darkly of
matrimony. Aunt Hannah Concannon would have suspected
the vestal virgins of frivolity. If she knew about Michael
Connor and the post-box — !

This Bridget, standing a whole two hundred yards clear of
the shadows of the rolling pin, is unexpectedly pretty. There
is a kind of glow about her that has nothing to do with the
light above her. Her eyes are always big. Even when she is
crying the tears roll out without shrinking the lids. Now —
Michael discovered it for the first time at the post-box —
they are larger than her mouth. Her mouth is like a small
Killarney rosebud. On most evenings she uses it chiefly for
giggling, a pleasant soft giggle that becomes quite breathless
as she remarks, ‘Ah, you’re a funny fellah.’

After one of these meetings Mr. Michael Connor lounges
home feeling that he is not only the tallest and handsomest
man in the Square, but a wit as well.

On the evening of Nicholas Joceleyn’s funeral, Bridget had
something more than light repartee to exchange at the lamp-
post. She was ‘In the Will’ she mentioned casually and had
heard it read. Mr. Joceleyn had left money, a great heap of
money, maybe a million, maybe two, to Miss Diana. The
house, too, he’d left to her, and she wanted them all to
stay.

‘So I’ll not be going back to Ballyshannon yet a while,’
Bridget said, making a pattern on the icy, sanded sidewalk
with her toe. She added that Mr. Joceleyn’s nephews had
been drawing matches to see who’d marry Miss Diana.
Mr. Burwell had sent her to fetch electric light bulbs for

148

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Mr. Nick’s room from the closet in the hall near the library
and they were talkiag loud.

‘There was nothing private about it at all,’ Bridget said
virtuously, ‘for the door was wide open. I’m glad Miss
Diana’s In the Will. And she can marry the one she likes the
best.’

‘There’s two pretty girls In the Will, then,’ Michael said,
emphasizing the remark with a squeeze around Bridget’s
plump shoulders. The squeeze was intended for her waist,
but that was a long way down for Michael to reach.

‘You’re a funny fellah,’ Bridget gurgled, and added half-
heartedly, ‘Keep your hands to yourself, Michael Connor.’

‘What would I do that for?’ asked Michael, finding her
waist this time. ‘I’ve no use for them at all.’

‘Then you’ll find some other use for them or I’ll be posting
no more letters here evenings,’ Bridget said virtuously.

She very nearly meant it, too. Her legacy had given her a
serious view of life.

‘It’s very proud you grew since you became an heiress,’
Michael said sulkily, taking his hand away.

‘I did not grow proud, Michael Connor. It’s yourself that
kept your hands in your pockets till I let fall by accident’
(Oh Bridget!) ‘that I was In the Will. It’s what my Aunt
Hannah and my Aunt Minna and my Aunt Sarah warned me.
Men is all alike. If they think you’ve got a lump of money
they’re at you like wasps to the jam pot. Till it’s spent, that
is. I’ll be wishing you a good evening, Mr. O’Connor.’

Michael growled something rude.

Not to be deprived of the last word, Bridget flung back
over her shoulder: ‘And if it’s heiresses you’re after, there’s
plenty in the Square. There’s my three Aunts and Miss

DETECTIVE METHODS

149

Diana. Take your choice. Doubtless they’d all come run-
ning.’

In the mood of gloom following this meeting Michael was
an easy prey for the Princess. She soon knew all he did —
and more. Then she began on Bill Shatswell.

With Michael the Princess had nothing to go on except
the knowledge that Michael sometimes met her brother’s
kitchenmaid at the post-box. The Princess had a habit of
storing in her mind isolated pieces of information. It was
surprising how frequently they proved useful. One of these
nuggets of knowledge was that Bill ShatsweU, at about this
time of year, might be expected to be heading for Arizona.

With this recollection and the slightly erroneous informa-
tion gleaned from Michael, she began her work. The Princess
was too expert to count on servants’ gossip being accurate.
She had mentally marked three million — Michael’s report
of Mr. Clifton’s estimate of Diana’s fortune — down to half
a million. But even half a million would be nice for Peter.
The Princess’s maternal affections were aroused and she was
willing to take infinite trouble to help Peter. Even including
a conversation with Bill Shatswell. What the Princess
needed was information and Bill would have it. Being in his
way as simple as Michael Connor, Bill would also give it.

Meeting him on the Esplanade just after Diana left her
was a bit of luck. The Princess was accustomed to using
luck efficiently: it is the test of greatness. Without asking a
single question she discovered that the rodeos of the South-
west would not see Bill this year.

The Princess expressed surprise, but added suddenly:
‘But of course I know why. Cupid. Definitely. Isn’t that an
arrow I see sticking out through your breast-pocket? Oh, no.

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

you’re right — it is just a handkerchief, and with those too-
captivating horses’ heads. And the tie to match. The way
you dress is something by itself,’ said the Princess truthfully,
and added with one of her most intimate smiles: ‘You’ve
always been a great favorite of mine. Bill, and I wish you
luck. I know that sounds queer from Peter’s mother. But —
all’s fair in love and war. Let the cleverest man win. And
Peter — there’s no one like Peter, of course, but he’s not
'practical. Visionary, you know, where his own career is con-
cerned. No — darling Peter. He’ll always look on while
someone else walks off with the prize.’

‘Told you, has he? Thought it was a dark secret.’

‘Oh, no! Peter doesn’t tell secrets. But of course I’ve
always known my brother’s plans. He always used to con-
fide in me — poor Nicholas!’

The Princess delivered this particular dilution of the truth
with a faraway look across the cold river.

‘So Eben was right — he did mean one of us to marry her.
Wish you’d tipped me off,’ Bill observed. ‘By now I’d have a
milk-white charger at the door and she’d be running down-
stairs on my arm in white velvet jodhpurs and a white satin
coat neatly fastened with diamonds, and away we’d go,
bucketty, bucketty, with a million dollars in our pockets
and live happy ever after.’

‘Oh, it’s as easy as that, is it? ’ the Princess asked with one
of her gayest laughs.

‘Blast it, no,’ her nephew admitted. ‘Not with Eben
drawmg the long match. And him such a model young busi-
ness man and all.’ He scowled for a moment, and then added
more cheerfully: ‘But it’s not long to wait. I’m second. And
I don’t know if Eben can warm up much in a week. Cautious
r^nstoTnor. Eben.’

DETECTIVE METHODS

151

The Princess asked what was going to happen to the others
if Bill carried ojEf the prize at the end of his week.

‘Won’t my poor impractical son have even a chance.^
And Nick? Where does he come in?’

‘Well, Nick’s out of it. Pete drew the short match. He’s
last. Not that he was keen about it, anyway. It was Eben’s
scheme. We’d each have a week’s courting, he said. Then
we’d each propose, but in reverse order. That means Peter
can do his courting and end up in a kind of whirlwind finish
with something pretty red-hot in the line of a proposal. Only
he seems sort of off his feed. I’m not sure he hasn’t taken a
dislike to Miss Joceleyn — Diana, that is. I don’t see why.
Nice quiet little girl. Nothing to dislike about her. WeU
broken. Holds her head up nicely. Good gait.’

‘What makes you think he doesn’t like her?’

The Princess spoke more crisply than usual.

‘Well, he didn’t approve of drawing matches, and when he
got his he chucked it in the fire without half looking at it. I’m
not so sure it was shorter than mine. I had kind of ^ idea he
didn’t want to cut me out. Pete’s such a good sort.’ .

‘Yes, he’s always been very fond of you,’ the Princess re-
marked in a tone of one admitting that her only son had
leprosy.

‘I wouldn’t like to feel he was pulling his punches,’ Bill
said. ‘Especially after all the trouble I’m taking. I’ve got a
pretty powerful scheme — but, I forgot, you might tell Eben,
or Pete.’

‘I won’t. I wouldn’t dream of it,’ the Princess said truth-
fully.

‘Well, I go to the movies every night and collect ideas and
make notes on them. It’s pretty hard work, because, of

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

course, I’m not an intellectual type, but I always find in rac-
ing it pays to study your horse. So on the same principle I’m
studying women.’

‘You — you’re sure you have the right authority?’ asked
the Princess.

Bill said he was sure. The Princess said nothing to dis-
turb his simple faith, but asked what he had discovered.

‘Well, so far,’ Bill reported, ‘a modified cave-man tech-
nique looks pretty good. There’s the crafty angle, but I
don’t believe I’d be so good at that. And apparently some
men still make doormats of themselves and hang around with
orchids crushed in their fists.’

The Princess admitted it was possible. She strolled for a
few paces and then harked back to something Bill had said
before.

‘So Nick’s out of it. No family feeling, I suppose. No re-
spect for Nicholas’s wishes. Like John. He was always the
most selfish of any of us. Except possibly Stephen.’

The Princess seemed to think family affection would make
a sigh appropriate, so she inserted one here and added: ‘Poor
Nicholas! Queer that after bringing Nick up, he left him
practically nothing. Of course he had his father’s money.
And a legacy was left to the mother. Quite unnecessary.
How is Nick, by the way?’

‘He’s not well. He’s — some trouble with his eyes.’

‘Do you mean he’s blind?’

‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ Bill said hastily. ‘Don’t say any-
thing about it. He hates to have it spoken of.’

The Princess lost interest in the subject. Having squeezed
everything out of Bill that she wanted to know, she turned
back just as he was telling her something dramatic about the

DETECTIVE METHODS

153

Maryland Hunt Cup. She waved to him over her shoulder.
He was standing looking after her with his mouth open.

"A very lucky habit/ the Princess observed, presumably to
the borzoi who pulled so hard on their scarlet leash that their
mistress’s footsteps seemed to dance behind them.

SOUND MATHEMATICS

Eben Keith was cautious. He was also thorough, system-
atic, and prompt. He had the business virtues and he looked
on the courting of Diana as a business matter. Naturally he
gave it his full attention. He did not expect to sweep his
cousin oflf her feet, but he felt that in time she would realize
his superior qualities. Now that Nick was out of it. Girls
had always been fools about Nick in spite of his rattle-
brained behavior. Nick’s charm was incomprehensible to
Eben, but he allowed for it methodically.

The period he considered suitable had elapsed. While he
was waiting for Diana in Nicholas Joceleyn’s library, he got
out a little brown notebook and wrote down a careful esti-
mate of his chances in tabular form.

BiU Peter E.J.K. Nick (out)

Looks 90 75 60 80

Character 0 0 100 50 (?)

Charm 50 90 0 100

Achievement 10 10 100 60

Total 150

SOUND MATHEMATICS

155

Evidently Nick was his only serious rival. If Nick would
stay out, Eben need, he felt, have little doubt of success.
Diana had seemed sensible. A sensible girl would appreciate
true worth if she had a chance to see it. Looking over his
figures ^gain, he decided that he had been overgenerous in
giving Bill and Peter ten points apiece for achievement.
What did some terrible pictures and a lot of cups won for
riding horses amount to.^ Still he let it stand and, priding
himself on his fairness, scratched out the zeros he had given
them for character. After all, neither of them was vicious —
only lazy and frivolous. Besides, one was a Prince and the
other was a Shatswell. They were not ordinary loafers. He
altered the figures, awarding Bill fifteen for getting on with
his mother-in-law. To Peter he allowed — grudgingly —
ten for his kindness to stray cats and old ladies.

In spite of this scrupulous fairness Peter and Bill did not
emerge as serious rivals. Eben’s conclusion remained un-
shaken; Nick was the only danger. As long as Nick held to
the entirely proper idea that his blindness kept him out of
the contest, everything ought to go smoothly. There was, of
course, a chance that Nick’s eyes might recover, but at least
he was safely out of the way at present. He had left Paul
Revere Square in his usual flighty way without telling any-
one, even Burwell, where he was going. He was no longer a
romantic figure with his dangling sleeve and his fiunely cut
features; with his thin lips curved in a reckless smile and his
eyes mysterious behind the dark glasses. It never occurred
to Eben that an absent figure can be romantic.

He snapped his notebook shut and clasped his neat, cold
hands behind him, then walked to the mirror and looked at
himself critically. Had he allowed himself too little for his

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

appearance? There was the poised slenderness of his figure
(and she would see him on skis if the snow held out), his alert
expression, his high forehead, the keen eyes behind the rim-
less octagonal spectacles, the decorous glint of the Phi Beta
Kappa Key against the hollow elegance of his waistcoat, the
crisp angularity of his collar and coat.

T may look like a runt to a great oaf like Bill,’ he re-
flected. ^Even Peter is taller than I am, but I stand so
straight that I look taller. And I am the type that wears
well. When I am President of Joceleyn & Company . . .
With a million dollars I can get control. The profit-sharing
nonsense will run its course. I’ll wait. I know how to wait.’

He put one lean hand, knuckles down, on the desk beside
him, hooked the other thumb into his waistcoat pocket,
leaving his gold key well exposed. The books on the desk,
the rich glaze of the ox-blood vase beside him, the plum color
and dull gold of the curtain just beyond, the dark oil paint-
ing of somewhere or other all fitted into the picture. This
was undoubtedly how the President of Joceleyn & Company
should look. The picture pleased him. He took out his note-
book again and devoted a new page — this was no time to
save paper — to making the picture a reality.

Tuesday (today) 4 p,m. Help D. J. shop for ski-equip. Be
sure to ask for discount for her.

Wed. 3 p.M. Walk to Art Museum. Mrs. Gardner’s Palace
(if open free) 8 p.m. Call. Take ’cello.

Thurs. eve. 8 p.m. Call. Take Projector. Films. 1937 ski
pictures.

Fri.-Sun. Eve. Skiing. Vermont. (Wishing Well?) If snow.
(If no snow, Symphony Sat, eve. Ask mother for tickets.)

Sunday, a.m. Church. Trinity or King’s Chapel. Let her
choose. P.M. Walk.

Mon. Eve. Movie. Ski Chase.

SOUND MATHEMATICS

157

As Diana did not appear, he read the list over methodically
making small figures against each entry. They had better,
he decided, stay at the Wishing Well. They would be auto-
matically chaperoned by Mrs. Jones. That would save the
expense and nuisance of taking a chaperone with them, or
attaching themselves to a young married couple, who would
very likely, Eben thought austerely, be worse than no chap-
erone at all. He knew that plenty of unchaperoned couples
went skiing over the week-ends. That was all very well for
ordinary people, but Eben Keith’s wife must be above sus-
picion.

Including gas, oil, and depreciation on the car the revelry
for the week came to over thirty dollars. He raised his light
eyebrows over this figure. Twenty-five had been the amount
he’d had in mind. If there were no skiing it would be less.
For a moment he hoped there would be no snow, but that
was a wish soon discarded. It was important that she should
see him on skis. Besides, she must learn to like skiing.

There must be snow. There would be snow, he decided.
And he must send her flowers. After all, one should do the
thing properly . . . Carnations kept well. A dozen carnations.
A good bright red. Catch the eye. Plenty of asparagus fern
. . . Probably a dollar and a half. Candy. Would she expect
candy? His pencil hovered over the page. He decided
against it. Fattening. Bad for the complexion. Post-cards
of the Museum would be better. Fifty cents. He entered the
amounts and shut the book.

Diana’s footsteps were on the stairs.

He did not mention that she had kept him waiting. He
had intended to, but her appearasice distracted him. She
had on the violet tweed suit and a hat that showed the bur-

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PAUL REVEEE SQUARE

nished gold of her hair. He had not noticed the little gold
flecks in her eyes before or the dimple in her left cheek. She
would look well on skis, he decided. Her voice was pleas-
anter than he remembered. It had a tone like the upper
notes of a ’cello played lightly. Eben experienced a peculiar
feeling just about where his ribs came together.

‘Excuse me,’ he said and, taking out his notebook, he
wrote, ‘Candy, $1.25. Post-cards, $1.00.’

Burwell shut the front door behind them with an air of
frosty disapproval.

‘It’s begun,’ he told Hannah gloomily. ‘Didn’t I say they
was only waiting until a suitable period had passed? Well,
young buttoned-up-pockets Eben’s taking her out. And she
smiling at him as if he was King of Siam.’

Hannah made a censorious noise produced by setting her
tongue firmly against her lower plate and kissing the air
three times. In the interest of accuracy she added that the
TTing of Siam was a shrimp and Miss Diana would look
straight over his head. Eben Keith was short, but not a
shrimp. And then: ‘Ogling is it you mean?’ she asked
darkly.

‘I’d scarcely go so far as that,’ Burwell, an expert in such
matters, replied. ‘I would call it more of a Tantalizing
Twinkle.’

Hannah kissed the air again with additional violence.

‘She’ll never take him,’ was Hannah’s opinion.

Burwell’s was that he wouldn’t be too sure. Eben Keith
generally got what he wanted. One way if not another.
Burwell took from memory’s upper bookshelf several vol-
umes illustrating that useful trait and blew the dust off them.
Hannah remembered Eben’s habit of getting his cousins into

SOUND MATHEMATICS

159

trouble and emerging with a halo around his own head ; that
he had more than once got Nick Joceleyn in wrong with his
uncle. She was, however, firm in her opinion that it would
not be Eben Keith who would lure Miss Diana into the dark
morass of matrimony.

‘It’ll be that Peter. A Prince. And that way he has with
him. It’ll be him she’ll take up with. Mark my words.’

Eben’s week of courtship was, he felt, on the whole a suc-
cess. He certainly made progress. Yet at the end of the
week he had a curious feeling. It was not insecurity ; he stUl
trusted his figures. It was more as if he had been walking for
a week with a small pebble — hardly bigger than a piece of
sand really — in his shoe. The pebble did not make him
doubt his own worth, but it did sometimes worry him about
Diana’s. She did not seem so sensible as he had thought.
Was she, he found himself wondering more than once, really
worthy of him?

That small pebble of doubt began to rub that first day.
Enthusiasm for art was all very well, but Diana became so
excited about Chinese pottery and porcelain that they never
went to Fenway Court at all. Eben did not like changing a
schedule. She said she would go every morning to the Mu-
seum and learn something. She talked rather too much about
it. Eben did not have time to point out Copley’s portrait of
his great-great-grandfather, nor any of the other things that
his father had left to the Museum to save the family taxes.

When he appeared in the evening with his ’cello, Diana
spent a disproportionate amount of time in dragging him
around the house to look at Chinese vases as if he hadn t
seen about a ton of them in the afternoon. She showed only
too clearly that she had not listened with full attention to

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PAUL BEVEEE SQUABE

his rendermg of Beethoven’s Minuet in G by jumping up at
the end of it, saying: ‘Lovely! Lovely! Now just look at
this hawthorn jar. I believe it’s every bit as beautiful as the
one we saw this afternoon.’

‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘she isn’t musical.’

He played his Mozart piece and the Bach one. He had in-
tended to play Trdumerei for an encore, but as Diana showed
him another piece of porcelain, he denied her that treat. He
took pains not to show that he had intended to go on. He did
not look oflfended when she asked if he minded terribly if she
turned on the radio for a few minutes. There was one of those
funny question programs. She’d sent in a question and she
wondered if they’d use it.

He made a note — mental, he had left the notebook at
home — that he must educate her taste. He would give the
radio to the Morgan Memorial and play the ’cello to her
in the evenings. They would not go out much. He would
have to give most of his attention to business. Of course at
first they would have to entertain a little . . .

‘Mx. and Mrs. E. Joceleyn Keith of Paul Revere Square
entertained a number of distinguished guests at dinner be-
fore the formal opening of the Joceleyn Museum of Cera-
mics.’ He must get his mother to give Diana the rule for
mock Hollandaise Sauce. And tell her how to make chicken
cutlets out of veal . . .

It was with a mind furnished with such pleasant thoughts
that Eben forgot the pebble-of-doubt. Looking at Diana
made the thoughts even pleasanter. There was something
about the way she held her head with the rope of bright hair
twisted around it that produced again that curious sensation
below Mr. E. Joceleyn Keith’s coUarbone.

SOUND MATHEMATICS

161

It was probably indigestion, he thought. He had hurried
over his work at the office and over his lunch so that he could
get away early. Luckily he had a bottle of soda mints. In-
deed he always carried one — for emergencies. He took one
now and felt better, temporarily.

He consumed an unusually large number of soda mints
that week.

The most serious inroads on the bottle were on Thursday
evening. He had planned that on Thursday he would catch
up on the work he had neglected on Tuesday and Wednesday
afternoons, and also do some of Friday’s so that he could get
off by two o’clock. He took his vacation on winter week-
ends instead of in the summer. He always said that Boston
was the best summer resort in the country. The east wind
was all he ever wanted of the sea, he often remarked. As for
mountains, what use were they without snow on them?

Somehow this particular report he was working on — it
was an important one too — did not engross him enough so
that he forgot his indigestion. Even when he pictured him-
self on a practice slope telling Diana exactly where to throw
her weight as she turned, he did not feel completely com-
fortable. He was curt with yoimg Mr. Griffin who came in to
show him his new aluminum poles and to ask about accom-
modations at the Wishing Well.

Eben told Mr. Griffin with crisp definiteness that the
Wishing Well would certainly be full over the week-end.
And he took another soda mint.

After such an exhausting day it was really too much to
find — on arriving at No. 37 Paul Revere Square with pro-
jector, films, and screen — that Diana was not alone. Notes
from an accordion issued from the library. Someone was

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PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

playing on that plebeian instrument a tune of mournful vul-
garity and embellishing it with a cascade of moaning minors.
The voices, largely obscured by the imbecile groans of the
accordion, wailed about ‘The man I love.’

‘Singing!’ Eben thought disgustedly. ‘And my Uncle
only dead three weeks. And an accordion!’ (A ’cello, of
course, was difPerent. Certainly in Eben’s hands there was
nothing pagan about it.)

Eben recognized Singleton Shatswell’s unreliable baritone.
The other voices he discovered by following Burwell into the
library were Diana’s and Polly Shatswell’s. Diana’s was not
unpleasant, it had that warmth and sweetness he had al-
ready noticed, but the total effect — !

The three musicians had their backs to him. Polly was at
the piano. It was only a shade flatter than the accordion,
not enough to matter greatly to ordinary mortals, but hard
on Eben. Polly’s voice, remarkable chiefly for its ability to
compete with the accordion, reminded him of a night club.
Not that Eben had ever been in a night club, but he knew
what to expect.

‘It was probably,’ he thought, looking icily at the uncon-
scious group through his glasses — the pince-nez, for evening,
more becoming — ‘what is called torch singing.’

In this he overestimated PoUy’s talents. When Polly slid
from one discord to another it was by accident. After a par-
ticularly crucial one she spun aroimd on the piano stool and
saw Eben standing grimly imder the chandelier with his
motion-picture equipment around him.

Diana saw him too and hurried forward smiling.

‘Oh, Eben. We’ve been having such fun. I hope you’ve
brought the ’cello.’

SOUND MATHEMATICS

163

Even tkrough Ms annoyance with this tactless speech,
Eben felt again that twinge in Ms breathing arrangements.

She had on a ridiculous dress of black velvet and white fur.
Her hair shone under the glare of the chandelier and her eye-
lashes made shadows on her cheeks. He noticed that her
lashes and eyebrows were much darker than her hair.

‘Actressy. Dyed probably,’ he thought, but without much
conviction.

There was a glow and freshness about her that made Mm
think of clean snow in the sunlight with the shadow of wMte
birches across it.

‘I thought you might like to see a few skiing pictures I
took last winter,’ he said stiffly, ‘but I see you’re busy.’

‘Why, I’d love to,’ she said in that warm voice that made
him forget his disapproval. ‘Of course I’m not busy. Single-
ton will help you with the screen. Won’t you, Sing.?’

‘I’d love to!’ Singleton said in a tone that made Polly kick
him, not very gently, on the ankle.

There was something about Singleton’s presence that
seemed to effect a subtle change on the fflms. Eben found
himself explaining how he happened to figure in Ms own
pictures so often.

‘The best way to check one’s form is to see a picture of
one’s self,’ he said, and to his own surprise found Mmself re-
peating it a minute later in a defiant tone, as if someone had
questioned the statement.

It was impossible to do justice to the film, not that Sing
and Polly were noisy. They sat in silence; stared at the
screen with what ought to have been flattering attention.
Eben had intended to show some of the turns in slow motion
so as to start Diana’s education. She had said that she skied

164

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

little.’ He knew what that meant. He would have to
break her of a dozen bad habits. He had meant to begin this
evening, but somehow he let the machine run at full speed
and substituting for the scientific comments he had planned
phrases like: ‘Down the Nose Dive.’ ‘Jerk Christie.’ ‘The
Get-Up-Again Club Race." ‘Spruce Mountain. Light poor
that day.’

His own figure winning the Get-Up-Again Club Race
seemed less birdlike than he had remembered it. The picture
hadn’t been taken from the right angle. The film gave its
dying flickers of snow and trees and black streaks and dots.
The screen was a glare of white. It was the moment when
Eben had meant to suggest that Diana might photograph
the race this week-end, but, instead of conferring this honor,
he packed up his things and went home.

Singleton, his plain dark face looking ridiculous above the
garish black and silver and flashing diamonds of the accor-
dion, followed Eben into the hall and had the colossal im-
pudence to ask if he and Polly could ride up to Vermont in
the rumble seat of Eben’s car.

Eben refused coldly, smoothly, politely. He was afraid it
would crowd Miss Joceleyn. His car really wouldn’t hold
four with their equipment.

Singleton accepted the rebuff with one of his unexpected
smiles.

‘Oh, that’s all right, Eben,’ he said cheerfully.

He went back into the library with his large hands flashing
over keys and buttons and braying: ‘We don’t serve bread
with one fish-ball.’

Eben felt again that pebble in his mental shoe. He walked
home without limping, however. Singleton, at least, was
hardly a competitor.

SOUND MATHEMATICS

165

It was just as well for Eben^s peace of mind that he could
not hear Singleton, as he and Polly walked home, observe:
‘Well, it’ll have to be the bus then/

‘Let’s not go,’ Polly said weakly.

‘It’s our duty,’ Singleton pointed out. ‘Don’t forget we’re
crusaders. You promised to help. Besides, a bus isn’t so
bad. Bloodcurdling, of course, but so much nicer and stufl&er
than a rumble seat. How I hate fresh air ! ’

‘There’ll be lots of it up there,’ Polly remarked.

‘You can’t,’ Singleton said firmly, ‘spoil an omelet without
putting in some bad eggs — and Eben’s omelet needs us in it.’

COURSE LAID OUT

On the long deive to Vermont Eben knew he was at his
best. What other of Nicholas Joceleyn’s nephews could talk
of business, music, sport, all with the light touch of the man-
of-the-world? Not even Nick, and anyway, ‘Nick’s out of it.
Nick’s out of it,’ the chains sang cheerily through the slush
on the road west of Montpelier.

Couching Lion was cut in silver against a sky of primrose.
The bare trees of the foothills made a purple mist around his
flanks. Shadows on the snowy field that had been pooljfi of
blue water changed suddenly to dull pewter. In the windows
of a white house huddled in the lee of a huge red barn, lights
pricked out.

A few miles back Diana had said, ‘That’s the road to East
Alcott.’

There was something in her tone that made him jam his
foot down on the throttle. They were safely past the road —
it cut back sharply from the main road, climbed up a preci-
pice between dark hemlocks along a frozen brook, a thor-

COURSE LAID OUT

167

oughly repellent road — before he said vaguely: ‘East Al-
cott? I’ve heard the name somewhere.’

‘I used to live there,’ she said.

There was a note of wistfulness in her voice.

For a moment Eben had the impractical notion of saying,
‘We’ll turn back — I suppose we can find a place for the
night,’ but common sense asserted itself ( . . . the rooms at
the Wishing Well would have to be paid for anyway . . .
Caesar’s wife . . . miss morning practice, laying out the
course . . .) and what he did say was, ‘There must be some
good hills around there.’

‘Yes, good open slopes,’ she said.

‘Queer thing that we have to come up here and teach the
Vermonters how to use them.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Nice country. Some people say it’s like the Tyrol. Ever
hear that? ’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose there are winter visitors even in a lonely place
like East Alcott.’

‘Yes. But it never seemed lonely to me.’

There was still a nofes of wistfulness in her voice.

‘You ought to learn to ski easily,’ he said by way of en-
couraging her.

. He spent the remaining twenty miles explaining different
turns. He had already told her some of the points that would
help her to photograph the race well. She understood the
camera, she said. Her father had one, only she traded it for
a load of wood when he was ill. She had paid the boy who
did the chores with her skis. And the doctor took the car —
it was pretty old but better than his — for his bill.

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PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

Eben changed the subject. Rural barter did not interest
him.

‘I’ll spend half an hour on the practice slope with you in
the morning. I’ll have to lay out the race course, but I’ll fit
in your lesson somehow.’

Diana thanked him with gratifying meekness. He re-
solved mentally to make it three quarters of an hour.

This generosity proved uimecessary.

Among the feet that clumped in ski boots around the long
table in the Wishing Well’s pine-paneled dining-room were
those of Sing and Polly Shatswell.

Singleton set down a plate heaped impartially with ham,
baked beans, brown-bread, two kinds of corn-muffins, honey,
jam, and cottage cheese. He almost broke Diana’s hand off
in his gorilla clasp.

‘Sit over by the fire,’ he ordered. ‘Take this plate. I’ll
get another.’

To his intense disgust Eben found himself cramping his
knees imder a not very early pine table next to Singleton and
opposite Polly.

‘How did you get here?’ he asked with more curiosity than
warmth.

‘Bus. All same vulgar herd,’ Singleton remarked around
a hunk of brown-bread.

He had visited the main table and brought back a plate
differing from the first only in havmg Montpelier sausage
added to its heaped delectability. Eben looked at this ag-
glomeration with disgust. He ate a little fruit salad and a
cracker. He was never a heavy eater and the idea of gorging
himself before a race he considered insane. Yet the spectacle
of Diana with her honey-colored hair melting into the honey-

COURSE LAID OUT

169

colored pine, with the pink glow of the firelight deepening
the pink of her cheeks and emphasizing the tilt of her nose,
was not unattractive in spite of her hearty onslaught on the
plate that Sing had given her. For dessert she ate butter-
scotch-pecan pie.

For dessert Eben had a soda mint.

He had meant to spend the evening in further instruction,
but Singleton and his odious accordion spoiled that plan.
Sing had barely crammed down his third piece of pie when he
began thumping out a boom-chick, boom-chick of bass
chords that set feet tapping. Someone shoved the long table
out of the way. Chairs went back against the walls.

'Bet my money on the bobtail nag.

Somebody bet on the gray,’

went Sing’s long fingers.

‘Boston Fancy,’ shouted someone.

‘Doo-Da — Doo-Da,’ went the accordion.

Someone behind Eben said: ‘Miss Joceleyn, I know you
can dance rings around everyone, but will you drag me
through it?’

It was that ass Grififin, who had no business there at all.
He and Diana had taken their places far down the room at
the foot of the set almost before Eben got up from his bench.
He leaned against the wall looking sourly at the dancers.

The noise was deafening. The constant tramping and
sliding of feet, glass and china rattling as the room rocked,
the throb of the accordion. Sing’s voice — sometimes a
hoarse roar, sometimes a cracked tenor yell: ‘Balance and
swing the next helow — Ladies* chain — Down the center ’ —
aJl vibrated too loud in Eben’s sensitive ears. The swinging
figures, the girls crossing in the curves of Ladies’ Chain, the

170

PAUL REVERB SQUARE

stampede of couples down the center were a dizzy blur
through which he followed Diana’s figure.

It was colorless compared to the riot of bright plaid shirts
around it, but its poised lightness was conspicuous in spite
of the severity of white wool and dark blue gabardine. She
had taken off the practical dark blue parka and the dark hat
with its projecting visor. Eben had not allowed her a gaudy
outfit. There had been a moment when she had been at-
tracted to a Tyrolean one, described by the salesgirl as ‘cute
but dashing.’ He had quenched this flicker of enthusiasm.
He meant her to look from the first as if she could ski.

He glanced with disfavor at one young person who had
removed her ski pants disclosing a skirt of the yellow-and-
black Macleod tartan and below it a sturdy pair of legs with
a baggy covering of pale blue flannel. She had also taken off
her ski boots. Her feet, too, Eben observed, were covered
with blue flannel. There was a collar of the same material
sticking outside the neck of her yellow sweater. The same
tint showed at her wrists. Eben was led logically to the con-
clusion that this nymph was encased in a pale blue under-
garment. He withdrew his eyes from her promptly only to
detect another similarly clad in a sickly shade of pink, only
partly obscured by a wrinkled brown skirt and a shirt of no
plaid that ever came out of Scotland.

Diana’s dark, trim figure was a relief. In the small red
sandals that never clumped and stamped, her feet were
coming nearer at every change in the dance. He could see
her hand — he had not noticed before how strong her hands
looked in spite of their slenderness — clasped by that ass
GrifiSn’s brown fingers. GriflBn had made mistakes at fibrst,
but she had helped him and he was now moving with enviable

COURSE LAID OUT

171

assurance. He said something that made Diana look up at
him and smile, releasing that confounded dimple.

‘She hasn’t," Eben thought, grinding his teeth slightly,
‘any business to look at Griffin like that."

He would let her know, indirectly, of course, when he got
her out in the moonlight, that Griffin was hardly more than
an apprentice, taken on to please Mr. Clifton, who was his
mother’s cousin, and paid a salary that you could just see at
a distance of three yards with a telescope on a clear day,
bound to be dropped when any dropping took place.

‘Which won’t be long now,’ Eben concluded, taking off
his spectacles and polishing them with a pink cloth he always
carried for that purpose.

It proved an unfortunate gesture.

Sing stopped playing with a long-drawn wail. Diana was
still some distance away from Eben. She was dancing again
before he could reach her. At the end of that dance he told
her with icy politeness that he was going to bed to be in trim
for the race. He was sure Mrs. Jones would make her com-
fortable. He would see her in the morning.

Eben did not sleep well at first. There was no corner of the
Wishing Well into which the noise of the accordion and the
vibrations of dancing feet did not penetrate. In one lull of
the music he slid off into a thin sleep, but he was always half
conscious of confusion. Sometime during the long night he
thought he heard skis on the practice slope, but the noise
blurred and he was on skis himself, gliding with the free
sweep of a sea gull between poles with green-and-white flags
on them each marked One Million Dollars.

Eben sank out of that pleasant fantasy into the sleep of
the just*

172

PAUL REVEBE SQUABE

He was tiie first one down in the morning. Diana had not
appeared by the time he went out with the other members of
the committee to lay out the course for the race. The Get-
Up-Again Club has its own ideas about races. They include
a little of everything and have been sarcastically described
by a member of a rival organization — jealous no doubt
as being a combination of the Grand National and a potato
race. No potatoes, as a matter of fact, have ever been seen
on the course, as Eben often stated.

Bill Griffin, disgustingly fresh in spite of revelry lasting
until the dissipated hour of eleven-thirty, was full of ideas
about the race. So was Eben. Bill Griffin said the girls
wanted to run the course so the committee ought to leave out
the terrain jump at the end. Eben and three other members
of the committee said callously that girls were of no impor-
tance. Eben had heard Benno Rybizka say that a terrain
jump well done was a good way to conquer a girl’s heart, so
the jump was necessary.

The wrangling over the course occupied most of the morn-
ing. Eben, who throve on contention — when he got his
way — arrived at the Wishing Well m a pleasant frame of
mind. Bill Griffin’s sulks high-lighted Eben’s mood agree-
ably.

He would have just time, he thought, to give Diana her
lesson and be sure she understood about the camera. It was
a clear blue-and-white day just cold enough so that snow
crystals squeaked musically luider skis. It was Eben’s fav-
orite snow — fine powder over unbreakable crust. The light
would be fine for photography. He could see the picture
already with his figure swooping around one pole after an-
other, his track a ribbon swiftly unrolled. Then the her-

COURSE LAID OUT

173

ringbone up the little bill, the rush across its flat top, his
figure dark against the sky for a moment — a geometric de-
sign of skis and bisecting poles. At last the perfect landing
while the crowd still breathed a long ‘a-a-ah’ of satisfaction,
and the glide across the finish line in the best time. It ought
to be good. And Eben had drawn the lucky slip of paper
that would start him first. He had noticed a little nick in
it . . .

He had already picked out the best place for Diana to
stand. He would explain about that first and show her the
camera; then the lesson.

His pupil, however, was not to be foimd. She was not
among the figures on the practice slope, nor among the
bridge-players, nor in the back kitchen with the ski-waxers.

‘She was here right after breakfast waxing her skis,’ Mrs.
Jones said. ‘She asked about you, but they told her you’d
went to see about the course.’ Mrs. Jones bustled through
the pungent odors of the back kitchen into the savory ones
of the front kitchen, tested a pumpkin pie to see if its crusted
amber depths would shake in the middle and added: ‘Guess
she’s went out with Singleton. He was with her. I recollect
his saying would she give him a lesson.’

‘That he’d give her a lesson,’ corrected Eben.

Mjs. Jones accepted the correction by saying: ‘Probably,’
and began chopping turkey giblets.

For a moment Eben’s sunny mood of approval of the world
clouded. There was a small particle of time, hardly a split
second, during which a voice strangely like his own said in-
side his head: ‘I don’t really like that girl. She ought to have
waited for me. Thirty dollars spent . . .’ Then the cloud
vanished under the glow of his morning’s work. Again he

174

PAUL BEVEEE SQUAKE

saw his figure come over the hill — the jump that Griflfin had
wanted to leave out of the course on the ground that some
girl might break a leg.

‘They don’t have to jump. They can always sit down,’
Eben had said, ‘and you can, too, if that’s what’s worrying
you.’

In his pleasure over the retort, which he would repeat to
Diana later, he stopped being annoyed with her. It was just
as well she was getting Singleton to teach her. It freed Eben
for more important things. Probably she realized that. He
put in the time thus saved in giving his skis the degree of
polish that best suited the snow. Half an hour slipped by
agreeably in ironing, spraying, powdering in a delicious
atmosphere of lacquer and varnish richly tempered with
steamy wafts of turkey, onions, and sausage.

In the benevolence of his mood he gave sound advice to
those around him and several teaspoonfuls of powdered wax
that he did not need to the young person in the pale blue
flannel snuggles. That was what they were — snuggles. She
told another ski-waxer so with what Eben felt was an im-
fortunate lack of reticence.

He had determined not to eat dinner tucked into any nook
of knotty pine with the Shatswells. After he finished his skis
he reconnoitered the position. His foresight and a donation
of thirty-five cents to Miss Marie LeDuc — an unavoidable
expense, duly noted in the pigskin book — reserved the only
table for two in the Wishing Well dining-room. It stood in
a sunny corner and looked out over the scene of Eben’s
future triumph. There was the mountain’s long profile white
against the blue, the nearer hills with black spruces bristling
along their tops, the white twisting gash of the ski trail in the

COUKSE LAID OUT

175

purple haze of hardwoods, the open meadow with the bright
flags flickering on the poles, the bridge wdth the willows, the
black curves of the brook, and white face of the bare hill. It
bumped suddenly out of the meadow. That devilish drumlin
— as Griffin called it — was conveniently arranged for those
who could jump. Those who couldn’t might sit down and
slide down its steep side into the lake of blue shadow at the
bottom. With Eben’s permission.

He ignored Singleton and with him Diana’s activities of
the morning. He needed all his time to explain her photo-
graphic duties. He ate sparingly. The sticky concoction of
dates and nuts barely held together with dark, crumbly
sweetness known as bread aroused distaste in him. Diana
ate two hunks, buttered.

For an uneasy second Eben wondered if she would get fat.
She showed no signs of it, but there was Aunt Bessie’s known
carelessness with calories. However, he could take up the
subject of diet later. He paused long enough in his directions
about where to stand to get the best picture of his jump to
make a note in his book.

In spite of her abnormal appetite Diana proved an intel-
ligent listener. The questions she asked about the course
proved that. While she ate her pumpkin pie, he told her ex-
actly how he intended to take every turn and slope in the
race. Also why.

When he left her — he always lay down for an hour before
a race and relaxed — he felt for her a warm glow of approval
and thought kindly: ‘All she needs is training.’ He sucked a
peppermint drop conscientiously. It helped relaxation and
was a source of quick energy. He felt the virtuous strength
of peppermint and sugar flow into his muscles.

TERRAIN JUMP

Eben was gratified by the size of the gallery. Even the
bridge-players who so mysteriously infest siding week-ends
came out of their smoke to watch. There were several burly,
silent men in mackinaws. The usual baker’s dozen of red-
cheeked urchins had to be dragged off the course. There were
housewives in fur coats that were young when the Great
War was fought, girls in bright ski clothes that thirstily
absorbed snow, girls in dark plain gabardine, men in plaid
shirts, or in sweaters worn modestly inside out and back-
wards to conceal — and yet reveal — letters and numerals.

He nodded amiably to the admiring villagers as he got
into the station wagon that was to take the racers to the
starting point. A little courtesy never cost anything, Eben
often said. If yokels — as these yokels did — received his
greeting with a blank stare of stupidity, that was not his
fault.

He waved a kindly hand toward Diana. She was on the
practice slope, twenty yards from the spot where he had told

TERRAIN JUMP

177

her to stand. He pointed toward the vantage-point. She
nodded, smiled, and held up the camera, but did not move
toward the appointed place. She was laughing at something
Singleton said as Eben lost sight of her.

Would she be in the right position? He mustn’t worry
about that now, he knew. He must relax. He took another
peppermint drop and sucked it methodically. He did not
let himself be annoyed by the frivolous conversation of that
ass Griffin. With that ability that marks the great, he shut
his mind to it.

He knew from the first second that his time was going to be
fast. His skis were waxed just right. He took the turns with
poised skill, hardly slowing at all. He came down out of the
woods in a dizzy rush like a wave breaking over a rock. He
was the wave, and in it, and on it all at once. It roared in his
ears. Its crest threw cold spray in his face. Its power was in
his arms and legs. He rode it, light, confident, alert.

The open pasture sloped below him. The impetus of his
downhill dive carried him swiftly between the bright flags.
There was wind here in the open. It blew sharp crystals on
his cheeks, but it did not slacken his speed. Now he turned
toward the bridge xmder the willows and the wind was be-
hind him. He sailed with it, cutting a silver ribbon through
waves of white, waves with blue hollows. Ahead of him was
the drumlin with the flags whipping at the top. He lost sight
of the Wishing Well with the dark dots in front of it. The
herringbone up the hill went swiftly, as it had in his dream.
He was on the flat top. It was harder to get up speed for his
leap than he had expected, but he went at it fiercely, pushing
hard with his poles.

He was in the air now, skis pointed up, poles spread at the
proper angles. He was floating, flying, sailing.

178

PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

Below liim the crowd gave that long sigh of delight and
wonder.

Was Diana getting the picture?

He turned his head, looked up at the farther slope.

The ground and the finish flags and the raw pink faces of
the crowd seemed to rush up at him.

He did not reproach Diana. It was the cracked ski, he
said generously, that had spoiled his landing. And of course
it was the landing that had spoiled his time. Those fatal
seconds while he was fumbling for his harnesses to release
himself from his spread-eagle position had done it. He
thought he remembered hearing the ski crack as he took off.
As time went on he became more and more sure of it. No one
was rude enough to ask him what cracked it. Not even that
ass Griffin who sailed across the finish line ten seconds ahead
of Eben’s time.

Eben had wrenched his knee in the fatal spill. Griffin was
putting an ace bandage on it when the girl racers drove off
in the station wagon.

Eben was still in pain as he limped through the crowd
looking for Diana. He would have preferred to lie down in
the quiet of his room, but he felt obliged to show an unmoved
face — and to explain — lightly and carelessly — about the
cracked ski.

‘I must have hit a rock under the snow somewhere,’ he told
Polly. This rock had become by repetition a chunk of white
quartz, practically impossible to see under its light coat of
snow. ‘My ski must have begun to crack then. When I
landed, it cracked some more and wrenched me over.’

Singleton said, more accurately than tactfully, ‘You ought

TERRAIN JUMP

179

not to have tried to look in the camera. You looked up. You
lost your vorlage. You were off balance before you landed.’

Eben swallowed his wrath and managed to say quietly:
‘Oh, I think you’re mistaken. I don’t remember raising my
head.’

‘We’ll see when the film’s developed. Diana didn’t miss an
inch of it. Here’s the camera. Diana left it for you.’

‘Left it for me?’

‘When she started for the race. You were having your
knee bandaged,’ Singleton explained patiently. ‘She’s been
gone fifteen minutes. You’d better be getting it focused.
She’s likely to sky-rocket out of them thar woods any time
now.’

‘She’s third,’ corrected Polly.

She pulled the collar of her coat up around her mouth and
enjoyed a smile in the shelter of it. Also she admired Sing’s
ability to look like Aldous Huxley thinking about eternity.
Singleton apparently noticed Eben’s expression of annoyed
incredulity no more than he would have a stout lady jammed
in a revolving door and going around fast. Less in fact. Sing
was a confirmed rescuer of stout ladies from revolving doors.

‘It’s ludicrous,’ Eben said. ‘Ludicrous.’

‘But gloomy,’ agreed Singleton. ‘Impulsive girl. And
gruesome. Very gruesome.’

Eben scowled.

‘Why did you let her? You must know she can’t ski.’

‘How would I know that?’ Singleton drawled in amiable
stupidity. ‘I’m no expert, but I thought she did very nicely
this morning. And last night. Of course it was moonlight.’

One of the red-cheeked urchins almost choked on a lollipop
and yelled, ‘Here comes one! Whee-ee-ee, see her go!’

180

PAUL REVEEE SQUARE

There was a black dot moving on the mountain-side. It
became a black fly. Then a black bird. On the open slope it
grew larger, but it stopped at the foot. After what seemed a
long time a second black dot appeared. This one held to the
course and crossed the bridge under the willows, appearing
for a moment as a girl in a gray parka, then vanishing behind
the drumlin. At last came the third figure, veering, swooping,
dipping in perfect rhythm. The hood of the dark blue parka
was thrown back. The sun struck on the gold of her hair as
she crossed the bridge.

‘You’ve got film left, Eben.’ Singleton, who had been yell-
ing like a Mohawk, spoke politely, as the dark blue figure
slipped behind the drumlin. ‘ If you go over where Diana was
you can catch her as she comes over the hill. Aren’t you
going to use the camera? ’

‘My knee,’ Eben began, but he never finished the sen-
tence. Singleton had already grabbed the camera with a
hurried ‘O.K. I’ll do it. Don’t thank me. No trouble at
all.’

He left Eben sputtering, loped along the practice slope, and
stood with the camera trained on the drumlin. The gray
parka appeared above it. Its wearer came across the top, in-
creasing her speed, but at the edge she hesitated. The camera
recorded a tangle of arms, legs, skis, and flying snow that
became miraculously a tall girl who picked herself up and
crossed the finish line with all her limbs intact.

Eben turned his back on the drumlin and the yelling
crowd. He did not see the small figure in dark blue catapiJt
across the top or leave the ground for the air — skis, poles,
and body balanced for flight. He heard that long ‘a-a-ah’ of
pleasure from the crowd, but he did not look back.

TERRAIN JUMP

181

He was soaking his knee in hot water when it was an-
nounced that Diana had won the girls’ race. Even Sing did
not dare to tell him that her time was only a second behind
that ass Griffin’s.

Eben carried it o£P well. When he saw Diana, he said to
her, shaking a waggish finger, ‘Now tell me who taught you
to ski!’

‘Hannes Schneider,’ Diana said simply.

Unfortunately Eben, having made his roguish gesture, had
turned his attention to the cup of weak tea that was his
evening stimulant.

It was destined never to soothe his nerves. Some made its
way down his windpipe, the rest was distributed impartially
over the surrounding territory including Mrs. Jones’s holly-
embroidered centerpiece. Eben was dignified during the
mopping-up. He did not ask any questions about Hannes
Schneider. In fact he ignored the whole episode.

He was pleased with her on the drive home. Singleton had
offered to drive Eben’s car, since Eben’s knee was so
bad. There was lots of room for three on the front seat, he
said.

Diana, however, had announced firmly that she would
drive. Evidently, Eben thought, she wanted to be alone with
him. She drove well, he noticed, for one who was accus-
tomed to an ancient specimen of an inferior breed of car. She
applied the brakes at just the points where he would have
used them himself. He did not praise her driving. With
Eben silence was the perfect herald of joy. However, he un-
bent sufficiently after a while to talk about skiing. He even
went so far as to ask her a few questions about Hannes
Schneider. She answered them with becoming modesty, and

182

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

added, too, that of course her winning yesterday was largely
luck.

Eben agreed without giving her the trouble of amplifying
the statement. He did that himself. He gave her several
points as they sped through New Hampshire. Eben had
skied dowui many of the slopes they passed: difl&cult places,
not like the course yesterday which was pretty easy unless
you were unlucty^ enough to break a ski, he said with a pleas-
ant laugh.

Except for her explanation about the race which Eben
accepted generously — it was, as she said simply luck — she
made only one remark that he remembered.

He had been talking about a friend of his who had his own
ski-tow and a cabin near Newfound Lake and she had asked,
speaking rather quickly — it was not an interruption really,
though he had not quite finished describing the ski-waxing
room: ‘\Miat would you do, Eben, if you could do just as
you like?’

The question came so suddenly that he was jolted into
answering: ^Buy Joceleyn & Company and have a ski cabin
on the next slope. It’s for sale.’

He realized almost at once that he had been indiscreet and
added hastily: ‘Of course that used to be my ambition, about
Joceleyn & Company, but everything’s dijfferent now. I just
said it without thinking. Having a ski cabin — that’s my
real ambition. Don’t forget that,’ he said, laughing.

20

HORSES AND ORCHIDS

Bill Shats-well had been thorough in his studies. His
book was full of notes on different methods of approach.

First on the list was the one where you said you had been
misunderstood from boyhood. You had been lonely, sensi-
tive. The world had been against you. Until now . . . Bill
crossed that one off. A glance in the mirror convinced him
that he looked too healthy. Besides, it was dangerous to
pretend you were misunderstood when obviously anyone
could see through you in one blink.

There was the protective angle. You called her ‘little
girl’ and folded her tiny snowflake of a hand in your strong,
manly clasp. This would combine nicely with the man-of-
the-world plan in which you summoned head waiters by their
first names, were wise with the wine list, and sent messages
to the chef about adding just a whisper of garlic to baked
oysters.

Bill felt this program also presented difficulties. He would
have to get to know too many head waiters too suddenly.

184

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

Ajid Diana might not care for a subtle overtone of garlic.
He was darned if he did. Besides, he had begun neglecting his
French at an early age and had kept up the good work ever
since. Dallying with French menus had generally resulted
in getting poached eggs decorated with morsels of old inner
tubes. Also bread pudding. So out with the man-of-the-
world!

He decided on the cave-man technique. He had always
inclined toward it. It suited him, he felt. Unfortunately for
Bill, it is easy as you slip in your waistcoat buttons — each
a horse’s head in aspic — to plan to be a cave-man. It s
even possible as you look in the glass at your pink-and- white
face to shut your mouth firmly and pretend that you are a
dominant character, a tough egg, a snatcher of women off
their feet.

BiU could carry the illusion right across the Square up to
the moment he encountered Burwell’s skeptical glance.
Under that gaze Bill reverted. He blushed. He stammered.
He looked as guilty as he had when he had whanged horse-
chestnuts through his uncle’s window. Or when he had been
caught putting a lei of skunk cabbages around the neck of
Paul Eevere’s horse. These crimes and others came back to
haunt Bill as Burwell took his coat and put it away with the
air of one putting a discarded garment into the Morgan
Memorial bag.

The cave-man gunpowder ran out of the heels of Bill’s
boots. He never had enough left for even one moment of
romantic masterfulness. He was never anything all that
week but Bill Shatswell.

However, Diana enjoyed that week. It was restful after a
week of Eben’s society. Failing as a cave-man, Bill fell

HORSES AND ORCHIDS

185

back on saying it with flowers. In the language of flowers
little provision has been made for moral admonitions to the
recipient. If Bill meant anything more by the river of color
that flowed into the house than "Neat little filly; nice easy
gait/ the flowers did not give it away, Daisies, it is said,
don’t tell. Neither, apparently, do gardenias or roses or
violets. Or perhaps that was all Bill really had to say.

Diana discovered that it was pleasant to be spoken to like
a horse. Bill would say, "Whoa, steady there,’ or "Soo-oo-oo,
easy. Take it easy!’ or chirp encouragingly according to the
needs of the moment. There was nothing in his cheerful
silences, broken at times by occasional clicks, whistles, and
mysterious equine metaphors, to imply that she was an in-
ferior being in need of instruction. She enjoyed the morning
Bill drove her thirty miles north of Boston to see his horses.
She timidly offered apples on the palm of her hand according
to Bill’s directions and patted velvet noses. She liked the
horsy, leathery flavors and saddles rubbed to the glow of old
cherry wood or bits with the luster of Paul Revere silver.

Bill laughed genially at Diana’s statement that horses
were lucky to have noses that never needed powder. He
accepted calmly her confession that the idea of hunting
terrified her.

"Never liked women in the hunting field,’ he observed,
soothing a chestnut mare who stamped an impatient white
foot and switched a short, reddish plume. "Easy, my beauty!
I’ll sugar your milk for you. Soo-ooo-oo.’

He led the mare back to the stall making more incompre-
hensible remarks.

"My wife didn’t hunt,’ he said as he came out again. "It
used to be nice. Cold afternoon. Horses’ feet striking sparks

186

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

on the road. Find the fire going inside. Kettle hissing. Fod-
der ready — English muffins. Brownies — she used to make
’em herself. The sticky kind.’

‘Tell me about her.’

‘She died when the kids were little, you know,’ Bill said
soberly. ‘It’s five years now. Dan’s eight and Priscilla’s
almost seven. We live across from you with my wife’s
mother — Mrs. Nesbitt. She wanted the kids, of course, and
she’s been awfully kind, but ’

‘I’m sorry. Bill.’

‘Thanks. It’d be worse if it weren’t for the kids. They’re
good little colts. Prance about and kick and nip each other,
of course. Can’t expect ’em to keep their heels down all the
time. Prissy’s a chestnut, too. Apt to be hot-tempered.
Like the mare there — Firefly. She’s a granddaughter of
War Admiral, by the way . . . The boy’s more like me. Model
character, of course.’

He smiled and strolled to the next stall.

There was something appealing about his smile, a sort of
wistfulness that lighted his heavily handsome face. Diana
had thought him stupid-looking in spite of his fine straight
nose and high color and large, brilliant eyes. Now she found
something attractive about him. His cheerfulness had a gal-
lant quality. His whistling had in it a sound such as a small
boy might make in a dark passage.

‘I think it must have been PrisciUa and Dan that I
watched across the Square one afternoon. I was lonely and
they seemed to be having a lot of fun.’

It sounded sentimental to talk about her loneliness. She
wished she hadn’t. She was grateful to Bill for taking it
casually.

HORSES AND ORCHIDS

187

‘If I turn Prissy and Dan loose on you, you’ll wish you
were at the South Pole,’ he said cheerfully.

‘I wish you would,’ Diana said.

The children came the next afternoon — a plain little girl
and a handsome boy. Dan was a small serious copy of his
father; Priscilla red-headed, freckle-faced, skinny, with her
features pushed together in the middle of her face. Her
bright mahogany hair was strained back from a high, rounded
forehead and braided in two stubby pigtails. There were
rubber bands on the ends of the pigtails. Mrs. Nesbitt con-
sidered ribbons frivolous and extravagant. Priscilla was
sensibly dressed in a dark plaid with a good deal of brown and
red in it. The designer of the plaid had not allowed for
Priscilla’s hair.

Sitting stffly on the edges of their chairs, the two children
looked at Diana warily: Dan from under a curtain of dark
lashes that left it in doubt whether his eyes were dark blue or
gray; Priscilla with a twinkling hazel glance that darted
rapidly about, only occasionally lighting on her hostess.
Diana asked about their school and they answered with
weary politeness. She told them about her own childhood,
being dragged about Enrope by a succession of distracted
governesses. They did not relax. Priscilla’s feet in their
scuffed brown shoes remained with the toes facing each
other. Her bare blue knees rubbed each other and her pipe-
stem legs stuck out at a strange angle.

Once during a particularly bleak pause she asked politely
what were the names of Diana’s ponies when she was a little
girl. Finding that there had been no ponies, she relapsed into
silence and studied a crack in the ceiling.

There was always the device of feeding the yoimg animal.

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but Diana knew that when she had exhausted that, she
would have nothing in reserve. Fortunately at this point
Burwell came in with a package. More flowers, she thought.
From Bill. It was a florist’s box. Then it occurred to her that
the string was not right. During the last few days she had
had a wide acquaintance with florists’ string.

It was apt to be a casual twist of jade or violet tape. This
was string, disposed in an elaborated pattern of neat oblongs
with strong square knots at the joints. The writing on the
box was no characterless looping from a florist’s pencil. It
was handsome black lettering as decorative as a page of
Gothic manuscript. It was drawing rather than writing with
each letter standing alone. It had a peculiar look, accentu-
ated by the fact that the ‘FRAGILE. HANDLE WITH
CARE, PLEASE ’ under the address had been smeared as if
a coat-sleeve might have passed over it while it was still wet.
The smearing was so inconsistent with the care of the letter-
ing that she stood looking at it for a moment, trying to ac-
count for it.

Priscilla’s voice said politely: ‘Don’t mind us being here
if you want to open your present from Cousin Nick.’

Her eyes had the eager gleam of a terrier puppy’s.

‘ Cousin Nick? ’ Diana asked, looking at the black letters.
She had a feeling that she saw them being finished one at a
time, patiently, then swept over by a coat-sleeve of a tweed
she recognized. Why did she recognize it? She had seen it
only once.

‘No one writes like him. It was the same letters on my
Chinese boxes nest,’ Priscilla went on, and Dan explained
carefully: ‘She means nest of boxes. He sent me a Chinese
plane. Wooden. Same as they fool the Japs with, he said.

HORSES AND ORCHIDS

189

I am making a whole squadron like it. I wish he would
come and see it. I suppose/ he said, turning his handsome
eyes politely away from the package, ‘you are not interested
in planes. So he wouldn’t be sending you one.’

This delicately phrased hint set Diana untying the string.
It would last longer as an entertainment if she did not cut
it, she told herself. Besides, the desk shears had disappeared
as scissors will. Even imder Burwell’s precise care the
scissors-eater that lives in all houses flourished.

She told Dan and Priscilla about the scissors-eater. She
almost succeeded in concealing from herself that she was
incapable of the ruthlessness needed to cut through those
knots that had been so neatly tied in the dark.

The box was only the outside box. Chewed-up silvery
paper and tissue paper were wadded around a smaller box.
Inside that was torn and crumpled Chinese newspaper.
The children burrowed and clawed at it. Priscilla announced :
T have struck something hard.’

‘Let Cousin Diana take it out on account of it’s fragile-
handle- with-care,’ Dan ordered in his slow, kind voice.
Priscilla stopped her terrier worrying.

Diana took the last layer of paper away and said: ‘Peach-
blow!’ in a tone that made Priscilla say, ‘I think you like
it as much as I like my boxes nest — nest a boxes.’

Diana set it on the desk, but she kept her finger-tips on
its cool smoothness. That strange blend of color that has in
it the warmth of the sunny side of a peach, the delicacy of a
peach petal, and the coolness of spring air, blowing through
drifting petals followed the graceful lines of the vase as
inevitably as if they were part of it. Form, color, and texture
all seemed to melt into a beauty that belonged only to this
particular ten inches of porcelain.

190

PAUL KEVERE SQUARE

‘There’s a note,’ said Priscilla, pouncing on it and holding
it out. She made Diana think again of a terrier — a small
Scottie bringing a ball with a bright-eyed, voiceless request
for approval and fun.

Diana could see an arm in a sling, the fingers of the right
hand anchoring the paper as the left hand slowly formed the
black letters.

Dear Miss Joceleyn:

I brought this for Uncle Nicholas. As I understand
you are taking care of his collection, I leave it in your
charge.

Yours sincerely,

Nicholas Joceleyn, II.

The paper had been tipped a little so that the words
climbed uphill. Climbed slowly, but steadily. Valiantly
too, she thought.

‘Does he say where he is.^’ Dan asked. ‘We wanted to
write to thank him, but he didn’t put his address. Grand-
mother says he’s probably gone.’

‘Never satisfied to stay in one place. So restless,’ Priscilla
added in accents borrowed for the occasion from her grand-
mother.

Diana, diagnosing their source, took an instant and
unprovoked dislike to Mrs. Charles West Nesbitt, a worthy
woman, descended from two Colonial governors; a woman
who paid her bills on the tenth of every month; a patriot
who heartily endorsed a special oath for school teachers
(‘The pure minds of our little ones must be kept free from
any taint of Communism’); a woman of acknowledged
generosity.

HORSES AND ORCHIDS

191

Everyone knew how patient Mrs. Nesbitt was with Bill,
who persisted in mooning around his stables. She had told
him over and over again that he ought to sell the place. He
was in real estate, wasn’t he? Not that he ever sold any,
but that was nothing unexpected, she told her bridge club.
First Bill didn’t sell life insurance and then he didn’t sell
automobiles and now he didn’t sell real estate.

‘Not any moss. He would not gather any moss. Grand-
mother said. What do people want moss for, Cousin Diana? ’
Priscilla inquired.

People who talked with Priscilla were generally driven
soon to that fine old truth, ‘I don’t know.’ Diana used it
now and rang for the ice-cream she had provided for an
emergency.

BurweU brought it and chocolate cakes of an adhesive
sort. There were peppermints of brilliant hues concealed
under the frosting. While the visitors were discovering this
interesting geological fact, Diana asked BurweU whether
Mr. Joceleyn himself had left the package.

‘No, Miss. A taxi-driver brought it.’

‘He hasn’t let you know his address, I suppose, BurweU.
I ought to acknowledge this.’

‘No, Miss. But probably he’ll call before long.’

He did not call. Bill did, every evening that week. Also
most afternoons. And two mornings. Real estate, he said
cheerfully, was flat. If you offered the State House with the
Ritz thrown in for a dime, you wouldn’t get a nibble.

He took her to a musical show that opened in Boston and
that would be pretty much of a wow by the time it reached
New York. He sent her a spray of orchids like butterflies
lighting among bayonets of green jade. If she didn’t like

192

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

them, he said, she could feed them to a horse. That was
what modern girls did. He read it in the New Yorker.
Diana said she must be a last year’s model. The orchids
were still fresh and fluttering on her shoulder when she
made her second visit to Bill’s stable. He said she’d better
offer them to Firefly, so she did, but the chestnut mare
rejected them with a scornful whicker.

Tt seems Firefly isn’t a modern girl either,’ Diana said.

Bill said he was glad and that he didn’t really like modern
girls. It was the nearest he came to a personal remark. He
turned away and the back of his neck became a deeper rose
color. In a husky voice he began to talk about the children.
He wished he could have them with him in the country, but
Mrs. Nesbitt thought they’d grow up savages. He supposed
she knew best — a man was so helpless about such things —
but it seemed pretty mouldy to him to have a kid with hands
like Prissy’s where she couldn’t ride every day. The little
grasshopper was cool as a mint julep on a horse. The boy —
well, he was a queer little chap, always with his nose in a
book, which was. Bill said, all the more reason why he ought
to be in the country. He was always getting A’s in school.
Bill confided in the tone of one rattling a family skeleton.
He certainly needed country life.

In short, fresh air and a horse to ride was Bill’s prescription
for whatever ailed you. Diana did not need to ask Bill, as
she had Eben, what he would do if he could do just as he
liked. Obviously Bill would have the house with the framed
color prints by Leech and Acken, with the stirrups for
necktie-holders and the bronze horses for book ends opened
and suimed and dusted. He would yank Dan’s nose out of
that dangerous thing, a book, and put it in safe proximity

HORSES AND ORCHIDS

193

to a horse’s neck — and no holding on by the reins either.
Priscilla would punch those skinny knees against a pony’s
fat sides. Her hair would be cut like a boy’s. The terrier
eyes would look out mischievously from under a touzled red
thatch. She would wear jodhpurs all day and eat like a fox.
Under the freckles her cheeks would grow round and pink.

Yes, a wife and a million dollars would do Bill and his
family good. Diana had met Mrs. Nesbitt the day before
and had found no reason to modify her prejudice against
that eminent woman. To rescue Bill and Dan and Priscilla
would be a piece of knight-errantry. There were moments
when Diana saw herself as a slightly more domestic Joan of
Arc. She only wished that being one would not mean a life-
time of offering apples to nuzzling horses.

There was a dark and scandalous secret m Diana’s life.
She didn’t really like horses. She wished they wouldn’t
foam when they chewed and then blow at you. Their teeth
always looked dangerous and there was that queer look their
eyes had when they showed white. Besides, sometimes a
horse stamped on your foot — though all in a spirit of good
clean fun, no doubt. It was only playfulness, of course,
when he switched his tail in your face or lashed out both
hind legs at you.

When he remembered that someone had once opened an
umbrella behind him at a certain spot in the road and bucked
at that spot and threw you off, that was because he had a
good memory. If your memory didn’t coincide with his,
you certainly couldn’t blame the horse. Sometimes it was
pure joie de vivre that made him shy and throw you into a
mud puddle. But very few horses will step on you when you
are down. Bill said so. And he had also specified that
woman’s place was behind the tea-kettle.

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

She saw the fat kettle coughing steam, the children
anointing themselves with strawberry jam. She even saw
herself picking a buttery piece of muflBbn off a hooked rug.
The rug had a horse on it. His tail swept the arsenic-green
grass on Tvhich he pranced. The picture was beautifully clear
except for one thing. The shadowy figure looking into the
fire wasn’t Bill’s. The back of his neck wasn’t pink, for one
thing. She went back to cataloguing camels from Chinese
tombs before the man had time to turn around.

So she didn’t see his face.

BLACKMAIL: POLITE, OF COURSE

Polly had teied a new lipstick. It produced a color a little
like a petunia with scarlet fever. You could, she had read,
change your personality entirely with a new makeup kit.

‘Maybe/ said the treatise on the subject, ‘HE has never
noticed you. Well, maybe it is your fault! Have you had the
infinite variety that has ensnared men’s hearts from Helen
of Troy to Greta Garbo? Throw away that old lipstick.
Choose a scheme that will make him see you . . . ’

Polly had followed the color chart carefully for a while,
but lately the eye-shadow and the IQss-a-Bell lipstick and
the petunia nail lacquer to match had languished in the medi-
cine cabinet. The lipstick might or might not be as adver-
tised. She had not had a chance to try it out.

It was a mouth of normal color that she twisted into a
cheerful grin as she said to Bill: ‘How are you coming as a
Lochinvar, horse-thief? Because Sing and I cannot stand it
if you are going to act like a gentleman. Eben is full of
mystery. Come on. Bill. What do you know?’

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PAUL EEVERE SQUAEE

Bill looked around his mother’s library contentedly.

‘How nice and warm Mother keeps this house. Mrs. Nes-
bitt thinks a warm house is unsanitary.’ He helped himself
deliberately to a chunk of maple sugar with butternuts in it
and at last inquired, ‘Why should I give my plans away to
the enemy Sing’s a rival.’

‘She has refused me,’ Singleton announced gloomily.
‘Xhree times. But it’s only on account of my age. She likes
me best really. She said so. But she pointed out that, when
I am twenty-nine, just at a man’s most attractive period,
she’d be thirty-three. TVell, she has something there. It must
be pretty mouldy for a woman to be thirty-three.’

Bill ate more maple sugar and made no comment.

‘Come on. Bill, stop looking as if you knew who’d win the
Grand National. We only want information so we can help
you.’

‘Sudden philanthropy,’ Bill observed.

Singleton explained that he had given up hope, but that
he and Polly wanted to keep Diana in the Shatswell family
and to that end they had formed the Shatswell Protective
Association. And Bill was practically twenty-nine — that
devastating age. Distinctly worth helping.

‘Eben’s twenty-nine,’ Bill remarked.

‘Ah, but we have taken measures. The Shatswell Pro-
tective Association has dealt with Mr. Keith. Et comment!’
Singleton said.

‘We chaperoned them,’ Polly added. ‘It nearly killed us,
feeling as we do about winter sports, but we didn’t neglect
our duty. Come on. Bill. Tell us how you’re getting on.’

There was an urging in her hazel eyes that contrasted
oddly with the lightness of her tone.

BLACKMAIL: POLITE. OF COURSE

197

‘Afraid she hasn’t much use for me,’ Bill said.

‘Oh, Bill, and after I got chilblains for your sake. And
Sing and I spent all our money on that ghastly week-end!
You don’t mean she likes Eben? Not after he made such an
exhibition of himself.’

‘How?’

Polly and Sing told him. The story lost little in the tell-
ing.

‘I don’t see,’ Bill observed, ‘that you two did so much.
He seems to have done nicely about dishing himself without
your help.’

Singleton admitted that Eben might have done well un-
aided.

‘But we annoyed him. The mere sight of us set his thumbs
prickling. And I played the accordion till my shoulders
ached. He hates that. I looked at him with that cynical leer
of mine that is so much admired. Under my gaze he was
bound to assert his superiority. And it was me that kept
Diana from telling him that Hannes Schneider taught her
to ski when she was a kid in Austria and that she’d spent the
last eight winters gliding down the sides of houses and bal-
ancing on skis on church steeples. I told her to surprise him.
It did. Of course I hoped the shock would kill him. Can I
help it if his arteries are made of rubber? Come on now. Bill.

Courage, my old one. We’ll help. Subscribe to our serv-

* >
ice.

‘I have an idea she likes Peter/ Bill said.

Polly asked: ‘Oh, do you think so?’

She ran her hand through her touzled brown hair and
straightened her spectacles. She had her usual impudent
grin as she took her hand away and added: ‘You wouldn’t

198

PAUL BEVJERE SQUARE

give up without a struggle, would you? Never say die!
Shatswell forever.’

As Bill continued to exhibit a gentlemanly reserve, Single-
ton asked: ‘Don’t you want our support, then? We might
as well tell you that those who do not subscribe to our per-
sonal service will have a lot of our society. Eben can tell you
what chaperones we are.’

‘Blackmail?’ Bill inquired.

‘Of a refined type. But sinister.’

‘What are you two supposed to get out of it?’

‘You can’t seem to understand patriotism,’ Sing com-
plained. ‘We just want to keep her in the family. Of course
I’d expect to usher at the wedding. And I’d be glad to give
any help I could about picking out the ushers’ presents.
You were always generous, BUI. I’ll say that for you. In
your lethargic way.’

Polly did not say what she hoped to get out of it. Bill
thought there might be something. In fact as he remarked,
‘Peter’s a Prince, you know — that’s quite an asset,’ he
thought he knew what it was. He left them with the pleasant
feeling that he had learned more than they had. He had no
intention of telling his plans to two such talkative relatives
as Sing and Polly. Even if he had any plans. He was not
sure yet whether he had. He had an uneasy feeling that
Diana didn’t really like horses . . , Anyway, this was Peter’s
week.

Peter had not been making the most of his advantages.
The first three days of the week that had been allotted to
him for making Diana acquainted with his charms he had
spent painting an ash barrel. It was a new barrel of dappled

BLACKMAIL: POLITE, OF COURSE

199

silver. Peter set it in front of a piece of Venetian brocade.
He put a cast of the Venus di Milo beside the barrel. She
was just tall enough to look wistfully into its depths.

Three civilizations, he was going to call the picture. The
ash barrel with its cleverly pleated sides represented the
twentieth century. It was much harder to paint than the
statue or the patterned richness of Renaissance weaving.
He was just beginning to get the shadows in the corrugations
as he wanted them when his mother paid him one of her
rare visits.

She had her usual effect on him. The picture had seemed
to have a certain cleverness until she looked at it. Under
Princess Lobanov’s amused gaze it became only another
unsuccessful experiment. While she was looking at the
canvas he remembered the way she used to say, ' ^That’s
that.^’ whenever he brought her something he had made for
her. Whatever he held in his hand used to return to its
original elements — so much crayon and paper, so much
wood and glue.

Once on her birthday he had had an inspiration. She
used air-mail stamps — lots of them. He would make her a
box with a plane on the cover. It took a long time to make
it. He couldn’t seem to deal with wood. The sides came
unstuck, and when he tried to nail them, the wood split.
He turned to cardboard and surgeon’s plaster. After all,
the plane was the important thing and the plane was good.

He painted the fuselage silver and the wings lacquer red.
It would look nice on her silvery writing-table. He bought
three air-mail stamps. He got a little paint on one because
the wings of the plane were not quite dry. He would have
bought another, but his allowance was gone.

zoo

PAUL B.EVEEE SQUARE

He could feel again the eagerness with which he went to
her room with the box in his hand. The plane was only the
least bit sticky. It looked poised for flight. His grubby,
painty fingers felt hot as they held the box.

Then his mother’s cool, keen glance fell on the thing in his
hand and she said: ‘What’s that?’

He never answered. He put it down on her desk and went
quickly out of the room. She was thanking him, but the
moment had gone. It was the last thing he had made for
her. He found it in the drawer of the desk years later. It
had been tossed into a box of odds and ends. The stamps
were still in it. The one with the smear of red paint was at
the bottom where he had put it. She had never seen the
spot, he felt sure.

He turned away from the ash-barrel picture and began to
wash his brushes. Futility hung aroimd him like a cloud.
He knew suddenly that he would never be a painter.

His painting had seemed a possible door of escape. No
business had a place for his inexperience, for his reputation
for ease and idleness. Even the scrubby little department
store in New Hampshire where the man wanted a partner
didn’t want him. He had kept on painting long after he had
known he was fooling himself. Suddenly, as his mother stood
looking at the glittering ash barrel, he knew that door was
slammed in his face forever. He would never get out by
that door; never get out at all. Never come home to a small,
neat house, smell supper cooking, find Polly . . .

He turned the canvas against the waU and folded up the
easel. His mother sat in a carved and gilded chair and
watched him lazily through little puffs of blue smoke. She
made small vague remarks about nothing in particular.

BLACKMAIL: POLITE, OF COURSE

£01

Her voice was pleasant and soft. It was like a cat purring
comfortably because she has not yet made up her mind
where to scratch.

Princess Lobanov, of course, was in possession of most of
the news of Paul Revere Square, but she had not quite
decided how to use it, so she continued to smoke and drawl
and watch her son as he moved about the big handsome
room. He was haggard and tight-lipped in the candid north
light. The Princess, seated in one of the dimmer corners,
looked decorative in a green velvet tea-gown. It had sable
at the neck and at the cuffs of the full flowing sleeves. A
barbaric belt of gilded leather and glass emeralds and rubies
held the folds around her admirably slender waist. If
Cossacks wore tea-gowns, this would undoubtedly be the
correct model. Seen through the smoke, with the slight
smile twisting her scarlet mouth and narrowing her long
green eyes, she looked more Slavic than the last Prince
Lobanov. He had been a dusty blond man with a square,
blank face. At least Peter remembered it as blank. He had
never seen his father either drunk or angry . . .

The Princess told some of her stories from Washington.
She knew them all. Humor. Malice. Half-truths. Lies —
plain and fancy. She told Peter the cleaner and funnier
ones. The transition to taxes was easy. She was naturally
worried about taxes. A pathetic case. When her income
began to increase from her brother's legacy, the tax would be
outrageous.

‘And this year my debts will take whaPs left,’ she said
calmly, watching a puff of smoke turn blue and gray and
fade into the haze. Tt’s tiresome. I’m so sorry, Peter, that
I shall have to stop your allowance.’

PAUL EEVEBE SQUARE

202

She sounded about as sorry as if she had said: ‘I’m so
sorry, Peter, that there is no bacon this morning.

‘I’m sure you’ll soon be making something by your paint-
ing,’ she went on in the same light tone. ‘You re doing
splendidly. So clever. And improving. Definitely.’

‘I’ve given up painting.’

Peter’s voice trembled on the last word. He meant it to
sound casual; knew furiously that it had sounded merely
petulant.

‘That seems a pity after all that’s been spent on it, but of
course you are your own master,’ Princess Lobanov said
with an enraging tolerance that drew from her son a bitter
‘I’m not and never have been. You’ve seen to that.’

His mother knew that anger is an expensive luxury. She
did not indulge in it, but simply dropped her eyelids lan-
guidly and asked; ‘Aren’t you — neglecting an opportunity?
For independence — rather an unusual one? Or — I’m doing
you an injustice. Stupid of me! That’s why you’ve given up
painting! That’s clever of you, really clever, Peter. She
must have had enough painters, having lived with Stephen.
I think it’s a good move, Peter. Definitely.’

‘What do you mean?’

Peter’s voice was hoarse. He started across the room,
stumbled over a color-box that opened, spilling tubes imder
his feet. Cobalt blue and alazarin crimson squirted over the
silvery floor.

He strode through it and stood over her.

The Princess opened her sleepy eyes and looked him over
from his white, tense face to his white shoes with the red and
blue smears on them.

‘Don’t be violent, Peter,’ she drawled. ‘You hurt my
wrist badly the last time you lost your temper.’

BLACKMAIL: POLITE, OF COURSE

203

He shrugged and turned away. It was futile to be angry.

'I can’t think/ he heard her voice going on, ‘just why you
are so excited. You’ve known, of course, that I couldn’t
keep up your allowance forever. With no expenses except
your clothes you must have been able to save a nice little
nest egg,’ the Princess said, generously attributing to her son
a virtue that she admired in others — if they didn’t mention
it too frequently. With equal generosity she added that
she had intended to give him something out of Nicholas’s
legacy, but Peter would, of course, understand that it was
impossible. ^And all I really came up for, Peter, was to ask
if I might not better invite Diana to dinner tonight. I
want to help you, Peter. In your struggle for independence.’

All he could say was, sullenly, H shan’t be here.’

Princess Lobanov stood up. She still looked languid, but
her voice sharpened.

'll would have been pleasant to settle this in a civilized
way,’ she said, ‘but since you will have it straight out, here
it is. If you don’t try to marry this little country cousin —
who seems to me quite an agreeable and attractive girl —
you will find yourself in a very awkward position. I shall
sell this house. I shall no longer make a place available for
the painting of ash barrels. I shall leave you in my will
perhaps a thousand dollars and my best wishes. Nothing
else. You don’t amuse me, Peter. My appetite for sulks
and ingratitude is limited. I shall be delighted for you to be
independent. I point out a pleasant way.’

Peter muttered: ‘And of course she’d snap up anything
you threw on the ash heap!’

His mother said dryly: ‘You have always known how to
make yourseh agreeable — in public. I scarcely consider Bill

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Shatswell and Eben Keith serious rivals. If she does not
take you, it will be because you don’t try. I might, of course,
help you — speak to Follingsby Clifton. That would be
suitable — since she has no father.’

Peter growled: ‘Keep out of it, will you.^’

The Princess agreed to keep out of it. She took the request
as evidence that her method of dealing with her exasperating
son had been successful. Apparently it would serve as well
to make a suitable marriage for him as it had before in
preventing a calamitously unsuitable one. The Princess
was not elated. She had never really doubted her ability to
handle him.

THE LISTENER

When the fibst light crept into Diana’s room it would
fall on the peachblow vase. She would he and watch it
change from a silhouette dark against the dawn to a shape
of misty gray and then gradually warm to its own mysterious
blend of sunrise colors. She could never be sure just how it
was going to look. It was as shiftmg as a rainbow. Yet there
was stability about it too — in the fact that it was always
there; in its inevitable flowing grace.

She had not outgrown her country habit of getting up
with the sun. Burwell would find her in the library working
over her catalogue cards when he came in to announce
breakfast. Each card had a number that corresponded to
one stuck on the bottom of a piece of pottery or porcelain.
On the card she wrote where the piece was kept and a
description of it. Sometimes she tried to identify it as Ming
or Elang Hsi, but the more she visited museums the less
she knew. The museums had great treasures of knowledge,
but they were inhabited by a race that breathed a special

206

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

air; spoke a special language. They answered her questions
with courtesy, a weary courtesy, a tender and tolerant
courtesy like that with which Confucius might address a
two-year-old child, but their replies consisted so largely of
reservations, evasions, elaborations, and long hard words
that she came out by the same door that she went in, know-
ing less than ever.

Her remarks on the cards came to read something like
this: 'A bowl of a kind of soft pale green that has a misty
clearness to it. There are some white places on it that make
one think a little of the tops of waves, or they might be
mountain peaks with snow on them in moonlight. I would
call it celadon if I dared call it anything. It is quite shallow.
It measures . . . ’

She was very precise about the measurements and she
photographed each piece and filed the picture with the card.
That was Peter’s suggestion. He had lent her a camera,
had left it at the house with instructions about using it
while she was in Vermont. Either his instructions were
incomplete or she did not follow them properly. Some
negatives were as black as a stovelid; others had nothing
on them at all. It was an expensive camera to feed and her
ready money was running short. It was taking a long time
to get the will proved and settle the ajffairs of Joceleyn &
Company. Mr. Clifton paid the servants’ wages and the
household bills. It did not, apparently, occur to him that
Diana might need money. And it never occurred to her to
ask for it. She supposed she would have some sometime.
Probably it was not really taking Mr. Clifton a long time
to produce it. It was, she reminded herself, only a matter
of weeks.

THE LISTENER

207

And this was Peter's week. Singleton had told her so.
It would be Peter who would keep the telephone and the
doorbell exercised. Peter who w^ould send her flowers and
take her to the theater. Or would he? Peter didn’t do things
like other people. Perhaps he’d be original.

He was.

Monday. Tuesday. No sign of Peter.

She was annoyed and ashamed of her annoyance. After
all, there was no law that Peter had to spend this week or
any other week in her society. Perhaps Peter was so original
that he wasn’t interested in a million dollars with a wife
glued to it. Perhaps Peter — surprisingly — concealed a
backbone under his Russian blouse. The idea ought to have
pleased her. Somehow it didn’t. She found herself listening
for the telephone and was irritated with herself for listening.
Singleton said Peter had gone to New Hampshire the week
before, but surely he’d be back by now.

Her Wednesday morning’s photography was all done
with the slide left in, as she discovered when she removed
the expensive film pack from the back of the camera. The
young curator of porcelains hurled the film pack into an
open fire where it burned with a hot celluloidish smell that
brought Burwell into the library sniffing.

Did Burwell know that this was supposed to be Peter’s
week? Of course. Everybody knew everything in Paul
Revere Square. She was sure that her Aunt Sophia, whom
she had met on the Esplanade the afternoon before, looked
at her with a new interest. The Princess evidently knew
that Peter was supposed to be bombarding the door of No.
37 — and wasn’t. Had he told his mother? Diana hardly
thought so, but she realized she knew nothing about him.

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Perhaps it was part of a scheme to arouse her interest.
That thought deepened the color in her cheeks and made
her eyes darken suddenly.

‘Yes, she’s actually lovely. In her style. With training
. . thought the Princess. Aloud she said: ‘I’ve been think-
ing, Diana. Even though Nick has gone — and that was so
wise of you to send him away — I still feel you ought not to
stay alone. I know there’s no harm in it, but “avoid the
appearance of evil,” I always say. So why not — unless
you have some friend, an older woman who would stay with
you — why not come to me.^ Silence the tongues. Ab-
solutely.’

Afterward Diana was surprised at her ability to lie so
suddenly. Annoyance at being told again that she was
subject for the tongues of the Square, rage at the idea of
being shoved down Peter’s unwilling throat, released an
unsuspected power.

‘Thank you, Aunt Sophia,’ she said politely, ‘but I have a
friend coming to visit me, so I couldn’t be away just now.’

She went home exulting in her new-found talent for the lie
defensive. It was not until the next morning, just before
she threw the film into the fire, that it occurred to her that
she must make her mythical visitor into a reality. She knew
that Princess Lobanov could not actually drag her kicking
and screaming across the Square into her Blue Grotto, but
it would be awkward when her aunt found that Diana had
looked her in the eye and lied. Diana was such an inexperi-
enced liar that she remembered about being one. The best
way, she decided, was to make the lie into the truth.

Only how.^ Diana didn’t know anyone to invite. Polly.^
She was hardly a chaperone and lately something seemed to

THE LISTENER

20 !

have happened to their friendship. Polly was still polite
and kind, but there was something forced about it . . . Bertha
Wilbur.^ But Bertha couldn’t possibly leave the farm and
the store. Who would wash the separator and fry doughnuts
and make cookies for the Parent-Teacher Association, and
sing in the choir and sort the mail? A whole army of talent
would be needed to get Bertha out of East Alcott. It would
take weeks of planning. Perhaps she could come aftei
sugaring, but Diana needed a visitor now.

It was at this point in her reflections that she discovered
her photographic catastrophe and pitched the film pack intc
the fire.

Burwell, having assured himself that there was no arson
going on, said; 'About that pink vase. Miss?’ Burwell said
'Vahz’ with the ease of long practice, an ability Diana
envied him. He would have been at home in a museum,
except that he was rashly definite. To come right out and
say pink!

Burwell continued: 'You spoke of acknowledging it. I
have ascertained Mr, Nick’s whereabouts. You can reach
him through this number.’

Diana took the slip of paper he held out. She said: 'Why,
Burwell, how clever of you! Why, you’re a detective —
it’s marvelous!’

Burwell often said to Hannah that Miss Diana was too
enthusiastic — for a lady. A lady ought to be — well, not
contemptuous exactly, but a bit more wooden-like. He
thought he ought to speak to Miss Diana about it, but some-
how when the occasion arose, he never had the heart.

He beamed now and said with a modesty patently false;
'Why, it was nothing, Miss. Nothing at all, I simply

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PAUL BEVERE SQUARE

telephoned his mother’s until I succeeded in establishing
communication with her. It appears she has been absent
from town.’

Diana was looking at the piece of paper with the address
and telephone number on it . . . Bulfinch 7770.

She said slowly: ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that number before.
Those three sevens. It struck me at the time — ’

She turned to the desk, fumbled in a pigeonhole, brought
out blotters from philanthropists, a picture post-card of
Wilbur’s General Store, East Alcott, a cartoon of Dahl s
about a gentleman who spent an hour waxing his skis and
then slid downhill sitting (What could Sing have meant by
sending her that?), and, at last, a clipping torn from the
Transcript.

Would you like a Listener? . . . Troubles . . . trip abroad . . .
golf game . . . Call Bulfinch 7770.

‘Look at this, Burwell,’ Diana said, holding out the clip-
ping.

Burwell read it solemnly. He seemed to find nothing
peculiar either in the offer to look at amateur motion pictures
— at a slight extra charge — or in the coincidence about the
numbers.

Diana had to point it out to him.

He still refused to be surprised.

That was, he admitted, Mrs. Rowe Joceleyn’s number.
It was also the number of The Listener. Only he saw
nothing remarkable about it. Mrs. Joceleyn was, in fact,
The Listener. She also ran the Help-a-Bit Shop which Miss
Diana might have noticed advertised. Her service was most
helpful. She would have one’s dog washed. Or one’s curtains.

THE LISTENER

211

Arrange the flowers for one’s wedding. And remember one’s
divorced husband’s sister’s birthday. Or so he understood.

^Mr. Joceleyn employed her in many ways such as arrang-
ing flowers for dinner parties and Christmas shopping.
She would accept nothing from him. Except in the way of
business. A very remarkable lady, Mr. Nick’s mother. If
I may say so.’

Diana wondered what movie Burwell had seen the night
before. He was always particularly butlerish after an evening
of Park Avenue celluloid. She asked him to call The Listener
and make an appointment. For that afternoon if possible.

Burwell noticed that Miss Diana looked different as she
spoke. There was a kind of shine about her. If you know
what I mean, he told Hannah.

Hannah knew what he meant and took a dark view.

Ht’ll be that William Bradford Carver Shatswell she’s
taking, and it’s planning the wedding with Mrs. Joceleyn,
she is,’ Hannah said with prophetic gloom. "The girls that
are in it these days are very frivolous and light. Lemon pie
for Mr. Nick one day. Lady Baltimore cake for Mr. Bill
the next. It’s not decent hardly.’

Burwell pointed out that some weeks had in fact elapsed
between the lemon pie and the Lady Baltimore cake. This
statement did not confuse Hannah in the least. She merely
recalled that in between these had been caramel (pro-
nounced carmel) ice-cream for Mr. Eben.

"Which I hope it puckered the prim mouth on him. It’s
light behavior, Mr. Burwell. Millions or no millions, I don’t
set up to be better than others, but this I will say, I was
never light. They could keep their millions, but I’d never
be light. No one can throw that in my face.’

212

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

No one did, and she immersed herself in preparations for a
chocolate souffle. Although Hannah would have been the
last to admit it, cookery had a new charm for her lately.
The talents of Miss Bridget Concannon of Ballyshannon
were employed in scraping carrots and massaging the bottoms
of saucepans with a wire brush.

hliss Concannon had undoubted gifts in these fields. She
exercised them somewhat sulkily.

The Help-a-Bit Shop was at the top of a tall house. Those
who had the courage to climb the four flights of dark, steep
stairs were rewarded by a room full of sunshine and daffodils.
Outside, the river showed blue silver between the c h i mn ey
pots.

Apparently business was not brisk this afternoon. The
door was open letting sxmshine and a fresh breeze and a
sound of whistling into the stuffiness of the hall. A girl in a
green dress was standing with her back to the door and her
dark head thrown back. She was directing trills and runs
and liquid cadences at a canary who surveyed her cynically
between gilt bars and answered with an occasional dry,
bored chirp.

The whistler was also inspecting papers and throwing
them at a wastebasket that had ceased to be big enough.
The drawers of the desk stood open and they were empty.
The girl, after imitating a song sparrow, a hermit thrush,
and an oriole in the flnal burst of melody, slammed the
drawers shut and spim around, putting her arms up and
changing her whistle suddenly into a yawn. Her eyes were
shut tightly, but still showed a fringe of dark lashes. Her
black hair was cut square across her forehead and curled

THE LISTENER

213

unnaturally but pleasingly around her ears. Her teeth, as
Diana had ample opportunity to observe, were perfect.

It was a surprise when she opened her eyes to find that
they were a pale gray blue, like larkspurs in a mist. It was
also a surprise to the owner to see Diana.

‘It’s what I would be doing when we’ve a new client,’ she
announced. ‘It would be grand if you would excuse me.
We’re all torn up, as you see. We’re being evicted.’ She
pushed some papers off a chintz-covered chair and added:
‘Sit down, won’t you? I’m Clare Desmond, Mrs. Joceleyn’s
secretary. She’s still listening to her last client, but there’s
only five minutes to go.’

The client’s voice came faintly through the door beside
the fireplace. No words could be distinguished, but from the
monotonous clack and whine Diana deduced that the owner
of the voice must be having a thoroughly good time. So
few people who both whine and chatter ever find a listener.

‘We’ve been having a splendid week,’ Clare Desmond
announced. ‘It’s a shame we have to move, just when
people are finding their way here. That’s the worst of being
tenants-at-will. They’re going to tear this building down.
We’ve known it these three months only we didn’t think it
would be so soon. What with the depression — no, it’s
recession I mean — and all. But today in bobs a large, pink
young man and solemnly tells us we’ve a week to get out.
I told him eat and sleep here — everything except the
birdcage and the wastebasket folds up into something else —
but he’d no mercy on us. I asked him to find us another
place, but he hasn’t. He’s a realtor,’ said the girl in green,
as if that explained everything.

She played the typewriter swiftly with her long fingers.

214

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

The noise pleased the canary. He looked toward it with eyes
like the heads of black pins and broke into a hymn of ap-
proval. The voice of The Listener’s client continued its
faint minor chant. Clare Desmond took the paper from the
typewriter. Its papery crash was part of a concluding chord
in wLich the client’s farewell, the shutting of a door some-
where along the hall, and the canary’s final cheep all com-
bined.

Then the inner door opened and Eleanor Joceleyn came
through it. Before she spoke, Diana realized why people
liked to talk to her. She had a listening look in her clear
blue eyes; kindness and alertness too. There was something
crisp about her — not only a matter of silvery hair and
starched white frills, but a precise neatness of movement.
Yet her voice was as Diana remembered it on the afternoon
of Nicholas Joceleyn’s funeral: a gentle voice with a soothing
rhythm and a variety of notes, as different from the typical
voice of Paul Revere Square as the canary’s trill was from
the clack of the typewriter.

T’m glad you’ve come. Do you mind wading through
those papers? Come into my room where the hurricane
hasn’t struck yet,’ she said.

The words were simple enough, but the voice lent some-
thing charming to them.

The inner room had a delightful air of peace about it.
A fire of cannel coal was snapping, sizzling, and splitting in
the small grate. Above it Audubon’s Arctic tern swept on
swift wings against a blue-gray sky, piercing the air with its
rose bill. On the opposite wall Rockwell Kent’s deer bounded
over blue-shadowed snow below bare trees and the sunlit
peak of Equinox. There was a cracked Lowestoft bowl full

THE LISTENER

215

of tulips near the sunny window. There were two comfort-
able chairs. In the slightly shabby depths of one of them
Diana felt suddenly that she belonged where she was. It
was a long time since she had felt like that.

Mrs. Joceleyn picked up a piece of embroidery and began
to work on it. The pattern seemed to belong to the period
when good William and Mary together came on. It was a
curtain for a friend of hers who had the character to keep
her house all in periods, she said. It took a lot, she added,
not to let Queen Anne and Queen Victoria into the same
room. Apparently the results would be serious — sponta-
neous combustion or something.

She put a blue-green stitch next to a green-blue one and
was silent. Her hands seemed to move slowly, but the
pattern grew. Looking at the scrolls and leaves and improb-
able flowers, Diana forgot just why she had come. Eleanor
Joceleyn did not ask her. Diana hardly knew just how she
happened to be telling about her weeks in Paul Revere
Square: how she had cooked the eggs; how she and her uncle
were friends; how his death had changed her from being
totally uninteresting to all her relatives, to being entirely
too attractive; how she had been lonely and was now lonelier
than ever. Even Polly Shatswell, who had seemed to like
her at first, was stiff and cold to her now. Probably that was
because Polly didn’t want to have Diana think it was on
account of the money she was friendly. It might be a
dignified attitude, but it was an uncomfortable one to meet,
and it didn’t help the fact that other people who hadn’t
liked her before were now so pleasant; or that she herself
had become suspicious of people and hated herself for it.

There was something almost hypnotic in those moving

216

PAUL EEVEEE SQUARE

fingers and in the clear, blue eyes that sometimes left the
pattern and met hers. Listening, Diana realized suddenly,
is not a passive state. There was nothing inert about
Eleanor Joceleyn’s listening. Eyes, after all, are doors, and
like doors are used for two purposes — going in and coming
out. The clear blue light turned on Diana was a two-way
sparkle. It received ideas and sent the answers all at once.

‘Lighthouses. Some people are lighthouses,’ she found
herself thinking in a moment of silence. The silence itself
was part of the charm, just as the spaces between the Arctic
tern’s wings were part of the pattern. There was no com-
pulsion to speak, imless you wanted to. Usually, impelled
by the comfort of the moment, by the warm sense of being
liked and understood and the occasional soft-voiced com-
ments, you wanted to.

During one of those restful pauses a pleasantly prepos-
terous idea occurred to her. She stumbled in expressing it,
but apparently she spoke effectively, because after a little
discussion Cousin Eleanor — she had suggested that nanie
as the solution of a difficulty, since what relation, after all,
is a half-uncle’s divorced wife.^ — accepted the invitation.
The evicted Help-a-Bit Shop was to move itself — its tur-
quoise-blue filing cabinets, its Audubon tern and Rockwell
Kent deer, its couch that was really a bed, its copper tea-
kettle that whistled like a canary, its secretary that whistled
like a thrush, and its canary that whistled like — well, like a
canary — to Paul Revere Square.

Diana felt like dancing all the way home. She was going
to be respectable. And she was going to have a good time:
circumstances not always compatible. Furthermore, she
was going to annoy her tall aunt, the specialist in etiquette.

THE LISTENER

217

and her stiff aunt, the philanthropist. As to her broad aunt,
the domestic character, she did not care about annoying
her. Aunt Bessie was a treasure, in her overstuffed way, but
Diana would not marry any of her aunts’ sons. She would be
a rainbow in Paul Revere Square. There would be a pot of
gold at her feet, but no one would find it. They might pur-
sue her but

The idea of pursuit brought her up short. She had been
pursued enough. People from outside the family had been
joining in lately as if it were anyone’s fortune hunt. Young
Mr. GriflBn had become importunate, in a vague and chival-
rous way, of course.

There were others, too. Eben ought not to have let the
Get-Up-Again Club see her. They did not notice the mental
No Trespassing signs he had hung up around her.

Perhaps, Diana thought, it would be a good idea to be
engaged to someone. Temporarily. That would choke off
the others. Not to Bill, because it would hurt his feelings
when she disengaged herself. Not to Eben, because a week-
end had been enough.

T will,’ she announced to herself airily, ‘be engaged to
Peter.’

She could not attend to the engagement at once, she rea-
lized. She had a lot to do. She must, for instance, break the
news to Burwell that the Napoleon’s Tomb reception room
was going to be the oflS.ce of the Help-a-Bit Shop. The bright
blue filing cases would cheer it up a lot. So would the
canary, whose name was Baron Munchausen. So would
Clare Desmond. Especially Clare Desmond. Clare was
delighted about moving into Paul Revere Square, She
would sleep, she said, in a filing case, or in a tall clock, if
necessary.

218

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Diana said it wouldn’t be. She gave a pleased chuckle as
she thought about Clare. She had plans for her. This was a
wonderful day. All her plans had an aurora borealis quality.
They flashed and glittered and there was a new one every
minute. She turned reluctantly from the latest inspiration
and began to think about making Mrs. Joceleyn — Cousin
Eleanor — comfortable.

Mrs. Joceleyn had better have Mr. Nick’s room, Diana
told Burwjell, and left him to break the news to Minna.
Luckily Bur well approved. He never even scowled over the
idea of Clare Desmond’s arrival and after all that made
three in the family.

He said benignly: Tt’s what I often said to Hannah, Miss,
a chaperone is imperative, I said. And you couldn’t have
made a more appropriate selection.

T believe you said Mr. Nick’s room, Miss.^’ Burwell
added in his Park Avenue manner. 'Pardon me. Miss, but
won’t Mr. Nick be using it? I inferred that with his mother
here ’

'He’s in the hospital, Burwell. Mrs. Joceleyn told me.
His eyes are very bad. There’s an operation they may do
later, when he’s stronger, but it will be a long time before he
can leave.’

'Nevertheless, Miss, I think Minna had better prepare the
blue room for Mrs. Joceleyn, which she occupied it before,
and the pink room for Miss Desmond. With your permission,
of course.’

Diana gave her permission. Burwell suggested flowers for
the table and confided the name of a florist, not the nearest,
nor the most expensive. But a reliable man. Mr. Joceleyn
had patronized him. He had an account there.

THE LISTENER

219

‘An account/ Diana said, ‘would be a help/

‘Are you short of — er — currency, Miss?’ Bur well asked
in the tone of one turning aside from an impropriety.

‘If you call twenty-eight cents short,’ Diana admitted
brazenly.

Burwell took out a handsome billfold and handed her a
crisp ten-dollar bill.

‘Mr. Clifton is undoubtedly incognizant of the situation,
Miss. I would advise 3^our conferring with him, but until
such time as you find it convenient, I would naturally be
your banker.’

Diana found herself taking the ten dollars. If Burwell
said it was natural for him to be her banker, why, probably
it was natural.

He waved away her thanks, not haughtily — kindly —
and opened the door with one of the most dignified Holly-
wood bows. She was halfway down the steps when he said
hastily: ‘If it was convenient — an afterthought, excuse it,
please — to buy some flowers for Mr. Nick, and debit my
account/

‘Why, of course, Burwell.’

‘Sweet peas, if possible. He was always partial to their
fragrance.’

‘I’ll send them over.’

‘The hospital — it’s only a step. But it might be too much
trouble. Miss. Only I was thinking — if you could take
them. You could explain they were from me. And I would
appreciate a first-hand report. You know how they are at
hospitals. Miss. “Doing nicely. Very comfortable.” If
you could see him. Miss Diana, I’d feel more easy.’

‘You might go yourself this afternoon, Burwell. There’s
no reason you can’t get off.’

220

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

^Pardon me, Miss, but with all there’s to do with company
coming and all, there’s ample reason. I can go on my after-
noon off, but in the interval I would desire him to have the
flowers. If you please. Miss. About two dollars’ worth, if
the bouquet seems adequate.’

‘All right, Burwell.’

Behind the closed door Burwell indulged in a private horn-
pipe, prancing on the black squares of the marble floor. It
was brief because Minna quieted the jigging coat-tails and
gray-striped trousers with a sarcastic ‘Excuse me, Mr.
Burwell,’ to which Burwell answered quickly: ‘Foot’s asleep.
Pins and needles.’

He stamped his foot heartily. It was not the one he had
been hopping on before, Minna noticed.

HOSPITAL

There were two men in the white room. The one behind
the door was running his fingers over a page of raised dots.
He did it slowly, intently, returning often to the top of the
page. He frowned in his intentness, deepening the vertical
line between his straight black brows. In spite of the blank
stare of the dark glasses there was something alert and alive
about him.

The man beyond him and nearer the window had a white
gauze turban on his head. His face was wrapped in gauze,
too, but out of it looked one serviceable gray eye. He saw
Diana standing in the doorway with the square box in her
arms and ^nounced to the man in the corner: ‘You got
company, pal, and how!’

‘Did the nurse say so? I’m not expecting anyone.’ Nick
Joceleyn found that his fingers had slipped among the raised
pin-pricks, and added good-naturedly: ‘Confound you,
Magee. I’ve lost my place in “Little Miss Muffet.” I’d
just got to the spider. But don’t tell me how it comes out.’

222

PAUL BEVERE SQUARE

Diana recognized the voice. Its lightness, its charm, its
odd rhythm came, she realized now, because his first speech
had been learned from his mother. Neither Paul Revere
Square nor Harvard nor China had changed it greatly.

She stepped into the room. He was moving his fingers
again over the page.

‘It ends badly,’ he informed his friend. ‘The dame did a
bunk.’

‘Dames is always scared of spiders,’ Magee said toler-
antly.

He grinned with what could be seen of his mouth, cocked
his gray eye at Diana in a knowing fashion, and added:
‘Make yourself at home, lady. No spiders here,’ with an
encouraging wink.

In the pause that followed, Diana said: ‘I’m Diana
Joceleyn. Burwell sent me with some flowers for you.’

Nick Joceleyn drew a deep breath and said, ‘Mayflowers.’

It sounded more like a statement than a question.

‘No, sweet peas,’ Diana said, ‘it isn’t time for mayflowers.
I’ll get some for you when they come.’

He looked up with a slight deepening of the lines around
his mouth — it might have been a smile if you could have
seen his eyes — and said: ‘Sweet peas will do quite as well.
Thank you for bringing them. And thank Burwell, please.’

‘I will,’ Diana said.

She opened the box and set the sweet peas on the table.
The florist had put them — fluttering butterflies of rose
and cream and lilac — in a jar of greenish-blue.

‘What color are they?’ he asked.

‘If you stood on your head near some sweet-pea vines
and looked up at the sky through them and saw some pink

HOSPITAL

223

and lavender and ivory butterflies, it would look a little like
this,’ she said.

He came closer to a smile.

‘Hints on flower arrangement. You ought to lecture on
it,’ he suggested.

Diana said that was an insulting idea. It seems she had
been to a lecture on flower arrangement. It made her yearn
to clutch petunias and snapdragons and mash them into a
cut-glass bowl, no matter what the Society for Educating
Vegetation said.

She knew she was talking idiotically. Apparently the
owner of the gray eye knew it too. He looked at her with
gentle cynicism — or possibly the bandages gave him that
look. She hoped it was that.

‘Is it true, lady,’ he asked, ‘that dames will pay to listen
to another dame tell ’em how to put one flower beside
another? I read about it on the paper, but I didn’t believe
it.’

Nick Joceleyn said that truth was stranger than fiction.
He also introduced Mr. Magee to Diana. Diana said that
what Mr. Magee had heard was so.

‘It’s kind of out of my line,’ Mr. Magee admitted.

‘Mj. Magee’s a wrestler,’ Nick said. ‘A crack one.’

‘Cracked, you mean,’ Magee said. ‘Ever see much wrest-
ling, lady?’

‘Only in the movies. It looks very dangerous.’

‘No more dangerous than flower arrangement,’ asserted
the wrestler, with a grin that moved the bandages. ‘Don’t
think I picked up these decorations wrestling, lady. It was
America’s gift to civilization, the automobile, that tossed me
into this bed. I’ll be out before long now. And won’t it feel

221

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

good to get out in front of a mob that’s yelling its tonsils out
and heave the other guy over into South Dakota? But say,
excuse me butting in. That’s me all over, grabbing off all
the wave lengths.’

Mr. Magee turned his eye upon a magazine with two un-
cannily clean and dapper wrestlers on the cover. He licked
his thumb, found a page of luscious technicalities, and gave
his attention to it. His own name was not mentioned, he
discovered, but he read on, moving his lips contemptuously.

His withdrawal from the conversation did not make it flow
easily. Nick Joceleyn, with his fingers still on the raised dots,
seemed to be waiting for Diana to go, but she stood there
looking at him. The tan was fading from his face and hands
leaving a yellowish pallor. The patches of gray at his tem-
ples had encroached still further on his black hair. His cheeks
undercut the bones above them sharply. One side of his
face was neatly shaven; the other was covered by a swarthy
stubble that increased his look of illness. There was an
electric razor lying beside the blue jar of sweet peas. She
wondered if he had been too weak to finish using it.

As if in answer to her thought he said: Tf I’d known I was
going to have a visitor I’d have finished mowing my face.
Someone next door wanted to use his radio. The shaver
makes it stutter and groan. So I stopped.’

‘You did a good job as far as you went,’ she said, smiling.
The smile was in her voice, too, and he responded to it with a
real one this time.

‘As Burwell used to remark when I cut the grass,’ he said.
*My mother — she was here last night — says you’re keeping
him on. I’m glad. And she teUs me she’s moving over to the
Square for a while. My uncle would be glad too, 1[ know.

hospital

iis

both on her account and on Burwell’s. It would kill Burwell,
I believe, to go somewhere else. You know he practically
brought me up. Got me out of scrapes. Sneaked food to me
when I was in disgrace, which was — every now and then.
Showed me how to shoot marbles so that I was about in-
vincible. Please thank him for the flowers, and ask him to
come soon to see me.’

Obviously he meant her to go.

She said quietly: ‘I wanted to tell you that the peachblow
vase is safe.’

The vivacity with which he had spoken of Burwell had
flagged. He said listlessly: ‘Oh, that’s good.’

‘Can you,’ she persisted, ‘tell me anything about it?’

‘I don’t know anything. I liked it and I bought it. In a
junkshop in Shanghai. One afternoon. The man who had
owned it had left the city because of the bombardment. It
may be a fake. I didn’t pay much for it,’ he said in his
languid voice.

‘I’ll take good care of it, anyway.’

He looked amused, and drawled: ‘Of course. You’re a
curator, aren’t you? I forgot.’

His tone had the indulgent kindliness of a grown-up at a
doUs’ tea-party. It was unreasonable to be irritated by a
man who was ill, nearly blind, and with little hope of re-
covery. Yet she was irritated.

She tried not to show that she was. When he asked, still
in that tolerant voice, how the Help-a-Bit Shop and the
Joceleyn Collection were going to get on together, she an-
swered politely that it would only be for a little while. Bill
was going to find another place for the shop. Nick Joceleyn
gave an amused twist to his eyebrows over this information.

226

PAUL BEVEEE SQUARE

He never understood, he said, just how one combined racing
and real estate.

Diana had already come to the conclusion that the two
pursuits did not blend completely, and that Bill would be a
long time re-establishing Eleanor Joceleyn and Clare Des-
mond and Baron Munchausen anywhere else. She did not
tell Nick Joceleyn so. She said good-bye to him with cool
politeness and to Mr. Magee with slightly more warmth.

When she looked back, Nick Joceleyn was moving his
fingers again in an attempt this time to follow the fortunes
of Little Boy Blue. Mr. Magee had given up literature.
There was something rather soothing about his final wink;
although she did not, of course, need soothing. There was
no reason at all to be annoyed by Nick Joceleyn’s rudeness.
No, not exactly rudeness — he had been pleasant enough
about Burwell: an irritating politeness. She was not going
to let it bother her. Or think about him. Aiter all, except
for the natural feeling of being sorry for anyone who was
blind, he was a matter of complete indifference to her.
Complete.

It was almost too easy — getting engaged to Peter. She
had expected to attend to it when she wasn’t quite so busy,
and could carry out a complicated plan for getting him to
come to see her. Since he had let slip practically all of the
week assigned to him, she realized that she would have to
undertake the courtship herself. She was quite unprepared
to have him stroll into Napoleon’s Tomb just as she was
dragging the purple-and-gold sofa — the one that looked
like a casket — into the hall. A sullen-faced mover with a
blue filing case on his shoulder and the words, ‘Where’ll you

HOSPITAL

227

have it, lady?’ issuing from the side of his mouth, had col-
lided with Peter at the door.

She told the man where to put it; not where she wanted it,
of course, but temporizing, as one does with men of power.

‘I can never resist a moving,’ Peter said airily. "Whenever
a door is opened and a van backed up, there am I, putting
my toes under crates or statuary, dropping china, leaving
boxes in doorways. Need some help, lady?’

‘I can manage all right,’ Diana said, and then remembered
that sturdy independence was no note to sound at this mo-
ment. What she ought to have said was, "Terribly,’ with a
melting glance. That would have led up to: "Goodness,
Peter, how strong you are!’

Realizing that she would have to improve her technique,
she added untruthfully: "1 do feel a little tired. Could you
put these chairs out in the hall?’

Peter dealt with the rest of the purple-and-gold cohorts.
He also lent a helping hand with a squirly-legged table. It
had a green marble top. There was a clock that harmonized
with it perfectly and had on top of it a figure of Icarus in
full flight. His flight on this occasion was, as predicted, to
Peter’s toe. Peter made a great deal of fuss over this injury.

"I was never one to suffer in silence,’ he groaned. ‘I leave
this unequal combat. In any struggle with art I always come
out second best. Symbolic, that’s what it is. Ouch! And no
sympathy for this blow received in your service. My wound
all unbound. You might at least take me away from the
scene of carnage.’

He gave another groan and limped toward the library,
stating that he would lie down on the sofa and Diana could
smooth his brow.

PAUL BEVERE SQUARE

228

‘Your brow?’ Diana inquired.

‘This is a Victorian mansion. It wouldn’t be proper for
you to smooth my toe.’

Peter stretched himself on the sofa and put his wounded
foot on the arm. From this position he proceeded to pry into
the reasons for thrusting out Napoleonic chairs and hurling
in such peculiar substitutes.

His comment was; ‘Wait till Lucinda Popham hears about
this commercial desecration. A poem is the least you can
expect. So, Tally-ho, and will the hunt be up!’

‘Your mother,’ Diana said, ‘thought I ought to have a
chaperone.’

One of Peter’s blond eyebrows was slightly higher than the
other. He raised the lower one so that it topped the other by
perhaps three eighths of an inch and whistled out of the op-
posite side of his mouth. Not everyone can do this. Peter
achieved it with some difficulty. It gave him an expression
of pamed surprise.

‘What luggage your chaperone carries!’ he remarked, re-
storing his features to their normal irregularity.

Diana explained about that.

‘So after tomorrow,’ Peter said, sitting up, ‘you will be
respectable.’

Diana said, ‘What of it?’ She sat down at her desk and
began to write a card for a small rice-patterned bowl.

Peter exclaimed, ‘Ouch, my toe,’ and added, apparently as
an afterthought, ‘Then this would be the best day to propose
to you.’

‘Would it?’ Diana inquired coldly.

‘You don’t seem overcome with joy,’ Peter remarked. He
got off the sofa, said, ‘Ouch,’ again, limped over to her desk.

HOSPITAL

229

draped himself becomingly over one corner of it, swinging his
injured foot and looking down at her with an odd expression,
half sulky, half appealing.

Diana tore up the card she had been writing, threw the
pieces into the wastebasket, and began to put the same mis-
information on another one.

‘I suppose you’ve made up your mind w^hat to say,’ Peter
observed.

‘About what.^’

Diana looked up and couldn’t help smiling. Neither could
Peter help a small-boy grin, rather sheepish and guilty.

Diana said, with what severity she could muster: ‘I
strongly suspect you, Prince Lobanov, of ti^dng to find out if
it’s perfectly safe to invite me to be a Princess, before you
ask me. Naturally it’s pretty dazzling, but, though dazzled
and unchaperoned, I’m still from Vermont. Caution is my
motto. You’ll have to ask me, Peter, if you want to know the
answer.’

Peter said, ‘Er ’ and looked even guiltier than before.

‘I don’t know how to put it,’ he managed to say at last.

‘I’ll put it for you,’ Diana said. ‘You don’t want to marry
me even with a million dollars thrown in. It’s not exactly
a compliment, but I don’t mind. Your mother is more —
practical than you are, so she chased you over here to propose
to me. I suppose she’ll have to call off her wolfhounds if I
decline the honor. And you want to be perfectly sure I will
before you ask me. Isn’t that about it — coarsely put? In
my rustic way?’

Peter turned a curious dull pink and admitted that it was.

‘ Go ahead then,’ Diana said calmly, ‘ask me. You may be
too late if you don’t hurry. It would hardly count if I were

230

PAUL REVEEE SQUARE

already engaged, would it? And Eben has made an appoint-
ment with me for Monday morning at eigbt-thirty. “To
speak of a topic important to us both.” Naturally I’m not
going to let a good opportunity escape. Even at breakfast time.’

‘ He did, did be — the louse ! ’ Peter exclaimed with evident
sincerity. ‘He wasn’t supposed to buy up options. I was sup-
posed to get the first chance to propose, because I had the
last week.’

‘You still have the first chance,’ Diana pointed out.

Peter looked sulky again.

He mumbled, ‘ Well, here goes ! Will you marry me, Diana? ’

‘Yes.’

‘Wh-what?’

Peter got off the desk and retreated a few steps, forgetting
to limp.

‘I said yes. Aren’t you pleased? We’re engaged now.’

Peter continued to stare at her with his mouth open.

‘You can go home and tell your mother,’ Diana suggested
thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure she’ll be delighted. But don’t tell
anyone else. Let’s have it for our secret. And — by the way,
Peter, what would you do if you had a million dollars? ’

‘I’d use it to get a million miles from here,’ Peter said,
finding his voice with a rush.

‘That will suit me perfectly,’ Diana said, and ad(ied kindly,
‘I think you left your hat in the hall.’

Polly was sitting with Nick Joceleyn when Peter came in,
late that afternoon. Nick could not see the way they looked
at each other, but he did not need his eyes to tell him that
something was wrong. Their voices were enough. Peter’s
was always like that — defiant and airy — whenever he got

HOSPITAL

231

himself into a jam. The more desperate he felt, the jauntier
he sounded. He must, Nick thought, be particularly miser-
able today.

Probably Peter’s mother had been badgering him: that
always used to be the trouble. There was no reason to think
that Princess Lobanov had changed. She was as consistent
as a rattlesnake. The strange thing was that Polly had
changed — Polly who had always stuck by Peter and kept
him steady through his worst times! It was her voice that
was strange with its notes of indifference and coldness. The
coldness could not conceal from Nick’s ears the pain under-
neath.

. She stayed only a few minutes after Peter came. Peter
spent a quarter of an hour in breaking rules for sick-room
behavior. He stood up and rattled things in his pockets.
He took out a pocket knife and drummed on the table with it.
He sat on the foot of the bed and shook it with his gestures.
He talked about the South Sea Islands, Lower Burma, and
April in England: pleasant places all, no doubt, to those who
can visit them. He looked out the window and squeaked his
fingers on the pane. He started to go and came back. He
dropped his hat and in picking it up knocked over a vase of
sweet peas. Only a Httle of the water ran into the bed, most
of it went on the floor.

At this point a nurse arrived. The glare she gave Peter
seemed capable of drying up large portions of Lake Superior.
She really ought not to have needed the mop she brought.
However, she used it with an air of tight-lipped martyrdom.

Peter departed hastily. He had not answered Nick’s only
question. It was about Uncle Nicholas’s porcelains: whether
Peter had seen how they were arranged. Few subjects at
present interested Peter less than porcelain.

238

PAUL REVEBE SQUARE

He found Polly in the garden near the big magnolia. She
was standing looking up into its pattern of pink and silver
and old ivory. The buds were still only stiff cold fingers.

‘You knew I’d come,’ Peter said.

‘Yes. I knew you’d come, Peter.’ Her voice had lost its
cold tone now. It was kind enough — only it was tired.
‘And I knew you knew it — that I’d be here. There’s no-
thing queer about that. After so many years. The queer
thing is that it’s the last time.’

‘Polly, don’t! You don’t understand ’

‘You mean that, when I met your mother this noon and she
showed me the emeralds that she was taking to have set in a
ring for Diana, she lied to me. She said you had asked Diana
to marry you and that she had accepted you. It didn’t sound
like a lie.’

‘Yes, but ’

‘You’re going to say again that I don’t understand. Peter,
I’m afraid I do. Somehow — it doesn’t matter how, very
much — your mother has pushed you into this. And you
expect to squirm out of it and then everything will be all
right. But, Peter, don’t you see? — it won’t be all right.
We’ll be just where we were before. I always said I wouldn’t
marry you as long as you were dependent on your mother.
Nothing has happened, nothing can happen, to change my
mind about that. It’s — it’s just no good, Peter.’

The children who had been playing aroimd the magnolia
had gone home long before, but one of them had left a small
blue automobile behind him. Polly stooped to pick it up,
turned away and laid it carefully on a bench. When Peter
saw her face again, she looked much as usual — a pale, plain
girl with thick spectacles, anyone would have said: that is.

HOSPITAL

anyone who had not loved her ever since they had played
together under this very tree.

‘It’s all a mistake,’ Peter said hurriedly. ‘Diana doesn’t
care anything about me. Ask her. She’ll tell you it’s only a
joke. I never loved anyone but you. You know that.’

‘I’m not jealous, Peter. I like Diana better than anyone —
but you. I’d rather have you marry her than have to see your
life the way it’s been — always.’

Peter said bitterly: ‘Don’t be so noble. Giving me to some-
one else! For my sake! What is this? The movies? I tell
you, I only went over there so Mother would stop hoxmding
me ’

‘And now your mother’s having the Czar’s emeralds set
for her. Here’s your seal ring, Peter. Good-bye. No. Don’t
come with me.’

‘The street’s free, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but not for quarreling. If — if you care anything
at all about me, Peter, you’ll let me go.’

‘All right. Go on.’ He took a knife out of his pocket and
opened the blade. ‘Why don’t you go?’ he asked, kneeling
and beginning to dig a hole at the foot of the tree. ‘ Curiosity,
of course!’ he went on. ‘It’s native to gardens. If you want
to know, I’m burying your ring. So that you can find it
when you want it.’

‘I shan’t want it,’ Polly said.

She walked quickly away without looking back.

Peter scratched a small cross on the bark of the magnolia,
wrapped the ring in a paint rag, thrust the wadded cloth deep
into the hole, and stamped the dirt down over it.

The stamping made him feel better — for almost a minute.

LOVE IN A CHINA SHOP

Eben Keith had prepared his speech with the care with
which he did everything. He was determined it should not
fail for lack of adequate rehearsal. He recited it in front of
his mirror before breakfast, jotting down the main points on
the back of a dentist’s appointment card rescued from the
wastebasket. Eben never squandered paper. His father had
died when Eben was young, but not before he had taught his
son to cut off the backs of envelopes and make them into neat
packages for notebooks.

Eben smoothed his ash blond hair over the thin place at
the top. The mirror gave a satisfactory view of the chaste
severity of his Oxford-gray suit, of the restrained elegance of
the three dollars and a half’s worth of striped dark and light
gray silk knotted with masterly precision, of the shirt with
the neat cording of gray and white. Eben was concave at the
point where — he noticed with increasing pleasure — some of
his contemporaries were becoming immodestly convex. He had
a right to be pleased with his slender, tastefully clad figure.

LOVE IN A CHINA SHOP 835

He regretted his spectacles for a moment and tried the
effect without them. Observing that the absence of their
gold and crystal luster gave him a somewhat uncooked ap-
pearance aroimd his pale brown eyes, he restored the glasses
to their place on his handsome nose. He surveyed his long
chin carefully in the hand mirror for defects in shaving, but
found none. He had never noticed that — in Polly Shats-
well’s wicked phrase — he always talked as if he were sucking
a lemon.

Eben was used to his mouth. He did not care for people
who smiled a great deal. Insincere, he thought them. His
teeth were fine, but he saw no reason for displaying them con-
stantly to the general public. When Eben enjoyed a joke —
he had a discriminating sense of humor — he laughed
heartily, but an eternal grin was no asset to a man who in-
tended to get on in the world.

A grave face lighting up occasionally was, Eben had read
somewhere, very attractive. There was the element of sur-
prise . . .

Eben practiced a grave face lighting up along with his
speech. He tried it when he said, ‘When I think of you,
alone, unprotected, inexperienced, it hurts me — here,’ in-
dicating a point slightly above and to the left of his Phi
Beta Kappa Key. It was definitely surprising. Perhaps too
much so. Like finding you have sugared a fishbaU . . .

He took another quick look at the card and said — to the
mirror: ‘I have always been lonely, Diana. I can understand
your loneliness. Together’ — here he tried the smile again.
It went much better. He put a small cross on the card to
remind him to use it.

He ran through the rest of the speech quickly, putting two

236

PAUL EEVEEE SQUARE

more crosses — for sudden face-lighting — at strategic
points. Then he went downstairs, drank his coffee and his
orange juice with conscientious slowness, chewed his dry
toast carefully, and read his newspaper. He had allowed
plenty of tinae. He even — as was his habit — had leisure
to acquaint his mother with the high-lights of the day’s
news. Eben was always thoughtful in little ways. After
his succmct summaries of world affairs, of the editorials,
and his suggestions about solving the crossword puzzle, it
was reaUy hardly necessary for Mrs. Keith to read the paper
at all. She persisted in doing so, however, and sometimes
found some item — a nice death or a horticultural hint —
out of which Eben had not already squeezed the juice.

Mysteriously the last two inches of toast seemed to stick
about an inch and a half below his collar button. A soda
mint relieved him, yet left behind the consciousness that
another might be needed. He took it as he waited for Burwell
to open the door.

Burwell, he decided, was getting entirely past his work.
Slower and lazier all the time. Diana must be made to see
that. After all, Burwell had his legacy, or would have soon.

It was a shock to Eben to find the Help-a-Bit Shop in the
reception room. Why hadn’t he been told about this?
Couldn’t a man go away for what was very likely the last
really good skiing without this sort of thing going on behind
his back? His mother ought to have told him. Of course he
had often said that he never wanted anything to disturb his
breakfast, but in a case like this . • .

Eben disapproved wholeheartedly of the entire affair —
the vulgar clack of the typewriter, Baron Mimchausen’s
ratthng accompaniment, the incongruous furnishings —

LOVE IN A CHINA SHOP ^7

sky-blue filing cabinets indeed! And chintz! And the black-
haired girl with the queer eyes who whistled while she
worked. Walt Disney to the contrary, Eben saw nothing
virtuous in combining whistling and work. Bold-faced was
the adjective he selected for Clare Desmond.

He was not mollified by having her stop whistling and
ask him an idiotic question: "Can I do anything for you?
Take your dog to walk or something?’

Eben said stiffly, "I have no dog.’

"That’s too bad.’

She seemed to be sympathizing with him. Eben resented
it. He scowled around the little room so inappropriately
brightened. His pale brown glance fell upon a sign propped
up on the mantelpiece.

"The Help-a-Bit Shop,’ he read in a voice that was a nice
blend of curiosity and contempt. "Do I understand that
you are conducting a business enterprise? In Paul Revere
Square?’

He spoke in much the same tone of loathing in which the
spirit of Isabella Stewart Gardner might mention that she
had heard Fenway Court was now a roller-skating rink. Or
as if he had found a toad in his soup plate.

Clare Desmond said that it was temporary. Until Mr.
Shatswell found them a place. She didn’t think they’d
broken the zoning law. It was all done, she said placatingly,
in such a hole-and-corner sort of way. Rather like a speak-
easy.

"Nevertheless,’ Eben said, with dreadful severity, "I shall
report it to the Paul Revere Square Associates.’

He liked the implacable ring in his voice. At least he did
until Diana said behind him: "Don’t set the police on us,
Eben. So early in the morning.’

233

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

He ground his teeth slightly and turned around. He did
not approve of her costume — a skirt the color of the gaudy
filing cabinets and a primrose sweater. That anyone would
wear scarlet leather sandals with such a costume seemed in-
decent to Eben. Besides, her feet were too small. He had
noticed it at the Wishing Well. She must pinch them. No
one in Paul Revere Square had feet like that. It was hardly
respectable.

Her costume was not the worst thing about her. She had
her arm linked in the arm of That Woman. His Uncle John’s
divorced wife. Whom his mother Never Spoke To. And to
whom Diana was, quite unnecessarily, now presenting him.

He mumbled something and felt like a guilty schoolboy
imder Mrs. Joceleyn’s polite but frosty blue glance. He
was reminded unpleasantly of the time Nick caught him
playing with Peter for Peter’s first marbles. Nick had made
Eben give them all back — fifty or more — on the ground
that Eben had better choose someone his own age. To Eben’s
protest that he had played fair, Nick had replied by much
the same coldly amused glance that Eben now found turned
on him. It had been reinforced, on that long ago spring day,
by Nick’s thin fingers digging into his arm.

It is certainly to Eben’s credit that he shook off his embar-
rassment and the spectral clutch of fingers on his forearm.
The thought that Nick, at least, would never look at anyone
like that again slid through his mind. He was sorry about
Nick, of course, but the thought somehow steadied him.
His voice was calm as he reminded Diana of their appoint-
ment. Many a man would have made an excuse at this
point and skulked away to his office. But not Eben. In-
flexible. That’s what he was. No matter what the obstacles.

LOVE IN A CHINA SHOP 239

One obstacle was tbe appearance of the library. He was
appalled by the clutter. There was china all over the place,
stacked on the piano, on bookcases, on tables. Where there
wasn’t china there were books, open books, piles of books,
books with naangy little slips of paper stuck into them,
scrapbooks in the process of being filled with clippings.
Glue and paste and labels and catalogue cards filled any
intervening spaces. The furniture from the reception room

— now improperly and in defiance of every tenet of Paul
Revere Square the Help-a-Bit Shop — had been moved in
here. The chairs were already heaped with back numbers of
Antiques. However, the purple-and-gold sofa was still un-
occupied. Diana sat on it while Eben, after carefully shutting
the door, began to deliver his speech.

He declined her invitation to sit down. He said humor-
ously — it was always wise, he knew, to begin with some
light, amusing quip — that he felt like a bull in a china shop,
but Diana mustn’t worry. He wouldn’t break anything.

In spite of his pacing about as he talked — he always
thought best on his feet, he said — he did not actually knock
anything over, although he did come into contact with a
sang-de-boeuf jar when he was taking a. brief glance at his
notes. He steadied it without missing a word, pausing only

— he had noticed a cross at that place — for one of those
surprising smiles.

The speech sounded even better than it had before the
mirror. Twice Diana started to interrupt, but he waved her
words aside with just the right gesture, tolerant but master-
ful. She looked down at her ridiculous red sandals a good
deal, so that what Eben saw of her was chiefly the pale gold
glint along her braided crown of hair, the darker gold of her

240

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

eyelashes, and the tip of her nose — a feature, like her feet,
inadequate by Paul Revere Square standards.

Eben forgot nothing. Every topic was covered: his an-
cestry, his clean life, his college record, his prospects, his
ambition, his loneliness, a loneliness not of body, but of soul.
An only child. Fatherless at an early age. Kindly nurtured
by a devoted mother in all material ways, it is true, but
Spiritually Alone. Consolation he had sought in Nature’s
wide, clean, snow-swept hills, and found it. Here followed a
paragraph on skiing and Nature’s solitudes that really ought
to have been included in the ski train advertising.

Diana, who had seen the Sherburne Trail in company with
about two thousand other lonely souls, wondered just where
there was any available solitude. However, she said nothing
so frivolous and Eben swung into his peroration.

*And when I think of you, alone, unprotected, inexperi-
enced, it hurts me — here.’

She missed the gesture. She was still looking at those
scraps of scarlet leather.

It was not in the script, but he interpolated: ‘Look up at
me, Diana.’

She did. There was a strange sparkle about her eyes, a
look that Eben had never seen before. It made his voice
tremble in a way that he felt must be effective — although
he had not planned it that way — as he went on; T have
always been lonely, Diana. I understand your loneliness.
Give me the right to protect you. Share with me my solitude !
Be my wife, Diana!’

He slipped the dentist’s card into his pocket and glanced
at his wrist watch. He had touched her evidently. She
had turned her head aside and had put her handkerchief to
her eyes.

LOVE IN A CHINA SHOP

241

"Don’t give me my answer now/ he said gently. "This is —
must be — a surprise to you. I will leave you and come again.
This evening, perhaps.’

She got up and said with an abruptness for which he was
not prepared, "I’d better tell you now.’

It was like a ski striking a hidden rock. The choked feeling
below his collar button returned.

"It’s a secret, but I feel I must tell you,’ she said, with a
strange lack of expression. "I am engaged to Peter.’ Then,
seeing his face stifiFen into anger, she added, "I tried to tell
you but ’

‘You can’t mean it,’ he burst out furiously. "That moron.
Waster. Loafer. And so under his mother’s thumb that he
jilted another girl so he could chase after your money.
You’U be sorry.’

"I don’t think, Eben,’ Diana said coldly, "that you ought
to talk that way about my fiance.’

Eben could only glare at her, but not for long. Even as it
was he was five minutes late at the office.

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

Only a shallow observeb would expect Ebenezer Joceleyn
Keith to be satisfied with Diana’s refusal. He realized at
once that he must save Diana from a disastrous marriage.
Putting the matter on a moral ground gave it, as it usually
did with Eben, a particular urgency. He gave his whole
mind to the best way of breaking up what he thought of as
the Lobanov conspiracy. When Eben gave his whole mind
to anything, he got results. One was that he neglected to
order a part for one of the tea-bag filling machines. This
meant that the machine would be out of commission for an
extra day. Eben did not enjoy the reproof he received, but
he consoled himself with the thought that when he owned
the Company things would be different. The important
thing at the moment was to think out the steps necessary to
put him in that position. A few tea-bags more or less was a
comparatively trivial matter.

Obviously the first step was to get That Woman and her
shop out of Paul Revere Square. They were imquestionably

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

243

a bad influence. Eben resented tbe fact that be bad been
obliged to make bis speech among cbina dumped out of tbe
reception room to make room for a dubious business witb a
silly name. Tbe best plan, be decided, would be to stir up
Bertram Sbatswell about tins insidious attack on tbe Square’s
integrity.

As to wbat Eben could only regard as sordid fortune-
bunting on Peter’s part, Eben bad another idea. It bad to do
with tbe financial columns of tbe paper, an unpleasant sight
that March to most eyes, but to Eben oddly gratifying.
March bad come into tbe stock market like a lion and, hav-
ing eaten up all tbe lambs in sight, was going out like a lion
too. The lion bore some resemblance to Adolf Hitler, a figure
who bad not up to this time enjoyed Eben’s approval. A
man who would put Hannes Schneider in prison! However,
tbe stock exchange news was pleasing to Eben.

He dismissed the topic and turned bis thoughts to Polly
Sbatswell in whose welfare he was taking an interest, belated
but sincere. Singleton, be decided, would be bis best dis-
tributor of information. Let Singleton find out there was a
secret and Eben could trust this most heartily disliked of all
bis cousins to find it out and tell it. An accurate appraisal
of his family’s weak spots had often stood Eben in good stead.

While be was concerned witb these soothing thoughts and
taking soda mints — for his sensitive digestion had not en-
tirely recovered — the Help-a-Bit Shop was having a busy
morning. Priscilla and Dan were there. They were having
a vacation and it had begun to pall. Mrs. Nesbitt had gone
to attend an important conference about preserving some-
thing. Not children. Something antique. Bill had actually
sold a house — believe it or not. The deal was going through

244

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

that morning and he had to be downtown. And it was a
rainy day.

Diana was still listening to Eben’s oratory when Bill came
and left the children in the hands of the Help-a-Bit Shop.
Clare Desmond had accepted them and was placidly typing
announcements of the Shop’s temporary quarters while the
children w^re lions and tigers under the table. Baron Mun-
chausen did his best to drown the roars and growls. After a
while they died down. Dan found an atlas and lay on his
stomach following the course of strange rivers with a stubby
finger and happily chanting strange names.

Priscilla turned her attention to reaching the top of a blue
filing cabinet. Surprisingly no one said, ‘Don’t, Priscilla.’
She got there easily and neatly without scratching anything.
She put a jiewspaper on the back of the chair before she stood
on it. You couldn’t hurt a black mantelpiece much anyway.
She sat there swinging her skmny legs, but keepiug her large
feet stuck out so she wouldn’t hurt the paint.

Her feet swung close to Clare Desmond’s left ear, but Clare
didn’t seem to mind. After a while she began whistling.
Priscnia came down from the top of the cabinet, still without
damaging anything, and sat down where she could keep her
bright eyes fastened on Clare’s face. Priscilla looked espe-
cially plain this morning.

Clare did not seem to find Priscilla’s comic ugliness less
attractive than Dan’s solemn beauty. In fact, Diana noticed
as she came into the oflSce there was something especially
kind in the glance Clare cast upon the ugly duckling of the
Shatswell family.

Diana had examined Clare on the subject of horses. The
result was highly satisfactory. Clare, it appeared, was home-

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

243

sick for pungent stable smells and a canter on green grass.
She wanted the electric feel of bit and bridle running through
her finger-tips. She would like to make a horse wheel on a
postage stamp as she laid the reins lightly against his neck.
She wanted the screak-screak of leather and the sound 'Of a
velvet muzzle blowing whirlpools in a mountain brook. She
was, in short, from Diana’s point of view pleasantly and con-
veniently insane.

Bill proposed that afternoon. He had none of Eben’s
eloquence.

‘I’m not much of a catch, Diana,’ he said, ‘but I’d have a
good try at making you happy — if you’d have me. I’ll —
I’ll give you Firefly for your own, if you like.’

It was then that Diana told him a little — only a little —
of what she thought about horses. He pretendeA^lL^ljnot
to believe it, just as he would have if she had connaed gently
that her father had been a bank robber and that she herself
enjoyed a little good clean safe-cracking over an occasional
week-end.

She didn’t blame Bill for seeming slightly relieved at her
refusal of himseK as well as of Firefly, or for seeming anxious
to get away before she changed her mind. She knew that he
must feel that no really good, pure woman could have said
that the only horse she had ever really enjoyed riding was a
rocking-horse! No wonder BiU stayed only long enough to
say that he was going to take the children to the country to-
morrow; that Mrs. Joceleyn had said that she could get on
without Miss Desmond for the day, and that Miss Desmond
had said she’d like to go along — to look after the kids.

‘ Great idea, this Help-a-Bit racket,’ Bill concluded, with a
cheerfulness praiseworthy in one who had just seen a million

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

dollars fall at the first fence. ‘Tell her to wear her riding
togs. I’ll have a mount for her.’

Diana had, briefly, the wicked notion of calling Bill back
and telling him she had changed her mind, just for the pleas-
ure of seeing the dismay on his earnest pink face, but she sup-
pressed this frivolity.

Instead she said: T know you’ll want to give me your best
wishes, Bill. I’m engaged to Peter. It’s a secret, of course.’

Bill’s felicitations seemed to contain a larger percentage of
disapproval than regret. He did not mention that Peter had
ever been engaged to anyone else. Bill was always a gentle-
man, a trait that takes a lot of the spice out of conversation.

Diana felt oddly shaken by the last few days. In thinking
them over, she dropped the top of a Lowestoft tea-caddy.

She had not seen Peter again, but Princess Lobanov had
called on her that afternoon just after Bill left. It was a visit
of state conducted, on the Princess’s part, in the grand man-
ner. The Princess had ignored the Help-a-Bit ' Shop care-
fully, painfully, as if it had been a paper napkin at a dinner
party.

The drawing-room being in use — Mrs. Joceleyn was lis-
tening to a client there — the Princess was shown into the
chaotic library. Perhaps this interview, during which Diana
felt as if she were in a registry ofiBce and as if the Princess
were looking her over as a possible kitchenmaid, was what
made Diana tired enough to drop Lowestoft tea-caddy
covers. Part of her Aunt Sophia’s condescension had taken
the form of recounting her own triumphs over the nobility
and gentry of a couple of continents.

‘There are only six kinds of proposals,’ she concluded, re-
moving her svelte black elegance from the purple sofa; ‘after
that they are all the same.’

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

247

Diana, going upstairs for the night with an aching head,
wondered if Princess Lobanov had ever had four proposals
— if you counted Peter’s — between Saturday and Monday.
Mr. Griffin had returned to the charge on Sunday. Diana
did not aspire to qualify as an expert, but she felt that she
was entitled to an opinion — as an amateur, of course. The
opinion was that there were as many kinds of proposals as
there were men.

She was not, she realized, yawning and tumbling into bed,
likely to have any more tomorrow. So she could get the
library cleaned up . . .

In spite of her sleepiness she lay awake for a while thinking
about Polly ShatswelL She understood now why Polly had
lost her friendly look lately. From the various remarks she
had heard, Diana had pieced the whole thing together —
Peter and Polly’s secret and hopeless engagement, Peter’s
struggles to escape from the Princess, Polly’s daily diet of
humiliation and uncertainty. She saw Polly’s ^expression,
patient, hurt, and puzzled.

‘She won’t look like that when I get through with her,’
Diana said to herself, and on that boastful note — her plans
for Polly’s facial improvement were still of the haziest — she
went to sleep.

It was morning suddenly. Sunlight was shining on the
peachblow vase, lending it new color and warmth. The sim
had widened its circle enough to shine into her window early
now. Across the Square there were crocus cups of purple and
white and gold with bees crawling into them. The grass
around Paul Revere’s statue was green. The mountain of
gritty, cinder-freckled snow near her own steps had gone at
last. The buds of the magnolias around the statue had begun
to open.

248

PAUL REVEEE SQUARE

It was not safe, of course, to say that it was spring. In New
England spring resents premature advertisement and has a
wide repertory of ways to show her annoyance. Still, one
might mention in an undertone that it wouldn’t be long now.
Besides, there was one sign impossible to disregard. Dan
and Priscilla were playing hopscotch. They were playing it
much too early in the morning and — just to make it harder
— on roller skates. Diana felt it was lucky they were going
to the country. It seemed obvious that Paul Revere Square
would not approve of hopscotch on roller skates. She could
see old Mr. Jeremy Pothergill standing at the window in his
nightshirt watching them. She felt sure that when he went
away it was to write a letter to the Paul Revere Square
Associates. Luckily he could not see that Priscilla, finding
hopscotch and roller skates incompatible, had now shinned
over the railing and was riding pillion behind Paul Revere.
That peculiar noise was the skates whangiag against the
horse’s flanks in an effort to urge him to greater activity.
Now Dan had moimted on the horse’s neck and was chant-
ing, ‘One if by land and two if by sea.’ Decidedly Dan and
Priscilla needed space for their activities.

Fortunately Clare Desmond soon appeared in her riding
clothes. They were far from new, but Clare looked, some-
how, splendid in them. There was a gleam of excitement in
her smoky blue eyes, pleasure in the tilt of her black head, a
special gaiety in her whistle. It took almost no time to pre-
vent further desecration of the Square’s patron saint. Really
from a number of points of view it was a good thing for the
Help-a-Bit Shop to send its secretary on a mission to the
country.

Mrs. Joceleyn had said that she could easily spare her secre-

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

ti9

tary. She did not expect a busy day, but the telephone began
to ring soon after Clare had gone. The Listener needed an
especially receptive ear, it seemed. What she heard she never
told — a quiet tongue being a Listener’s chief asset — but
doubtless it was important to her clients.

She said at luncheon, with a somewhat harassed air: ‘It’s
nice to be busy, but I promised Nick to take him a book. In
Braille. He asked for something more exciting than Mother
Goose. I’ve got “Alice” for him — he still has to read some-
thing he pretty well knows by heart. Could you take it over,
Burwell? ’

‘ Certainly, Madam, but — there’s the door and the tele-
phone and your clients coming and it’s Minna’s day out and
what with Miss Desmond away ’

T’m quite strong enough to open the door myself,’ Mrs,
Joceleyn announced, but Burwell said firmly: ‘It wouldn’t be
suitable. Perhaps when Miss Diana goes to the market . . . ’

‘I’ll take it, of course,’ Diana said.

The room had become familiar now. BurweU had been
ingenious in thinking up reasons for her visits. It was a kind
of game that she found herself playing without knowing ex-
actly what she was doing in it. She told herself that she went
largely out of curiosity. She wanted to see if Nick Joceleyn
would ever again treat her like a human being. The question
was still unanswered.

His bed was empty today. Magee, the wrestler, shorn of
his bandages, was alone in the room. He proved, surpris-
ingly, to have a bald head. There was a new pink scar on it
that ran down near his right eye and other scars in the
bristles aroimd his jaw.

250

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

He greeted Diana cheerfully.

‘Is he better? I suppose so, if he’s up. I’ll just leave this
book. His mother sent it. Will you tell him?’ Diana said.

‘Yes, he is better,’ the wrestler said, not paying any atten-
tion to the Braille version of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ a big
volume with thousands of pin-pricks on the stiff pages.
‘They could do the operation, if they could get the material,
I guess.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I will give you the dope. Like the nurse gave it to me.
It seems there is a piece of your eye called the cornea. Ki nd
of horny stuff like cellophane wrapping. Well, if that
thickens up you cannot see. Like if someone decided they
would wrap your eye in plain paper instead of cellophane.
Get the idea?’

Diana said she did.

‘Well, now, Nick — he said to call him that — has got
what the docs call a central opacity on this cellophane stuff,
which means it is like a thick spot in front of his eye. Both
eyes. He can see a little light around it now that the rest of
his eye is healed up, but that is all.’

‘And it won’t clear up?’

‘Not a chance. But these docs — you got to hand it to
’em for some nifty ideas — if they had a nice fresh pair of
corneas, they would peel his off and sew some new ones on
instead. Or, anyway, kind of patch them. Only they have
not got any material.’

‘But — where would they get it? ’

‘From someone that had to lose his eye for some other
reason that did not hurt the cornea. Or from some individual
that had — that did not need his any more,’ Mr. Magee said
delicately.

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

251

‘You mean from a — a dead person, but ^

‘Yes. And I suppose you are thinking they is plenty of
them, which is what I said to the nurse. Well, it appears it
ain’t — is not — so simple. These corneas has got to be in
first-class condition, so they would like to get them, I sup-
pose, off someone in pretty good health and there is quite a
lot of the population that is not in good health when they
die,’ the wrestler explained carefully. ‘Then it’s got to be
done right away. Sometimes they’s relatives that object,
claiming when the body is resurrected there will be a couple
of corneas short. Which it seems to me that anyone that is
smart enough to resurrect you and get you hitting on all
eight cylinders would not worry about a little glass for the
windshield. What is your opinion?’

‘Like yours,’ Diana said. ‘Just because a man lost his foot,
for instance, he wouldn’t have to limp always. There’s
enough cruelty in this world. I don’t believe it goes on in the
next.’

‘You are right, I hope. It would not be a great deal of fun.
Like — like being a wrestler that could not wrestle.’ He
paused, turning his clear gray eyes toward the window for a
moment, and then went on: ‘So you see it’s not so easy. The
way I work it out is, you got to find someone healthy and
dead and without any relations to make a fuss. And you
have to approach him tactfully — which it is a difficult sub-
ject to be tactful about — while he is still alive and get him
to sign a paper saying the docs can have what’s left over.
Though I must say they are very nice about it. They spoke
to me on the subject one time and I signed up. Making a
contribution to the advancement of science, I think the doc
called it. Only unfortunately it seems I am recovering. It is

252

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

hard to break up a Magee even with a large truck. We are
tough guys.’

‘Are you a big family?’ Diana asked.

‘I spoke poetical. Coming down to everyday statistics, I
am all the Magees they is. Of my own particular lot. Kind
of a lone wolf, as it were.’

Diana started to go, but he said persuasively: ‘Do not
hurry, if it can be helped. You could not have an idea how
dull it is here for him. I read to him sometimes about how
the Chinamen — Chinese — are getting on, but I am an
uncultivated baboon ’

There were steps along the passage.

The wrestler muttered hastily: ‘Don’t mention — er —
cellophane. I don’t think they told him yet.’

The nurse at Nicholas Joceleyn’s elbow said sweetly:
‘Here we are. Back safe and sound. And we have a visitor.
With a big, big book.’

Diana had not realized that his face could express so much
pleasure.

‘Mother,’ he said, taking a quick step forward.

Diana said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and the nurse gabbled coyly,
‘Guess again, Mr. Joceleyn. Three guesses.’ She gave one
of her mirthless, professional giggles and added, ‘Pretty
yoimg for a mother. There with that hint!’

His face had already sagged back to its look of blank
politeness. He bowed slightly, stiffly, and said, ‘Good after-
noon, Miss Joceleyn.’

The nurse said, with approval, ‘Smart boy,’ then, finding
that he had detached his elbow from her warm clasp and was
moving alone toward his bed, changed it to ‘Naughty boy!’

She pursued him, tucked him into bed with fussy kindness

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

253

(Well, all right, we can keep our dressing-gown on, if we like.
Don’t we look nice in that dark red. Miss Joceleyn.^ And
don’t we know it?) and departed in a flutter of starch and
coyness.

‘Your mother couldn’t come, so she sent me to bring you
this copy of “Alice,”’ Diana said.

His face lightened a little as he thanked her and took the
book.

‘Hope it will be peppier than the last one you read me,’
the wrestler said in his hoarse, friendly voice.

‘Sidney does not care for the classics,’ Nick Joceleyn said,
touching a group of dots lightly. ‘Mother Goose bored him.’

‘And how! And call me Sidney again and you wiU find
absorbent cotton in your soup,’ Mr. Sidney Magee promised.

‘He likes to be called Crusher,’ Nick Joceleyn explained.
‘It makes him feel more brutal.’

Magee winked carefully at Diana, so that she would be
sure his remarks were intended to be taken lightly, and went
on: ‘A gentleman usually offers a lady a chair, I heard.
Keeping up with Emily Post, like I do.’

‘And you kept her standing, Sidney! I mean Crusher.’

‘When you find this cotton in your soup it will perhaps
choke you,’ Mr. Magee retorted, and added a wheezy laugh.

Diana said she must go now. She did not, however. An-
other nurse, a grave one this time, appeared with two order-
lies. Between them they moved the wrestler’s heavy body
onto a wheeled table and pushed him away.

‘Stay tfll I get back. Mass. He needs someone to quarrel
with,’ he wheezed over his shoulder.

She stayed: partly because of the appeal in the wrestler’s
voice, partly out of a stubborn intention of making some im-

25i

PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

pression on her cousin’s cool composure. Curiosity, too,
played its part in her staying. Why did he dislike her? WTiy
did he always treat her with a cold politeness so much ruder
than any boorishness?

He asked her to sit down and she did. The coldness melted
out of his voice as he asked about his mother, about Clare
Desmond, about Burwell. It disappeared entirely as he spoke
of Crusher Magee.

T hope he’ll get good news today. Even if he doesn’t, it’s
time they stopped kidding him along.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Either he’s going to be able to walk again or he’s not.
They must know by this time, I should think. Naturally I
know a lot more than the doctors. All the patients do. The
nurses keep us filled up with first-hand misinformation about
each other.’

‘Was his back injured in the accident? He didn’t say any-
thing about it.’

‘He wouldn’t. But it was. And he’s had no feeling in his
feet since. It sounds bad to me.’

It did to Diana. She saw again the look with which Magee
had said, ‘It would not be a great deal of fun — like being a
wrestler that could not wrestle.’

‘What — what would happen to him?’ she asked.

‘It was a truck belonging to a big company that ran over
him. They might do something for him. Only apparently
they were not at fault. From his own accoimt it seems that
the accident happened because he slipped on the icy street
and that he wasn’t crossing at the right place. Jay-walking
and with the lights against him.’

‘I suppose wrestlers make a lot of money. I hope he has

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

255

some saved up. Anyway, he doesn’t have to be in a big ward,
so I suppose he must be all right about money.’

‘Probably, but ’

He did not finish the sentence and did not need to. It rang
in Diana’s ears as clearly as if he had said: ‘What use would
his life be?’ He would not say it: it would sound too much
like his own cry. From her an expression of pity for a wrest-
ler who might never wrestle any more would have sounded
too much like pity for a flyer without wings. There was
nothing to say. Instead she told him about the Paul Revere
Square’s horror over the invasion of the Help-a-Bit Shop;
about how Bertram Shatswell had called to protest and had
remained to hire someone to give a beauty treatment to his
shelves of brown-and-gold books. She told him about Clare
Desmond and the Shatswell children starting off for the
country in Bill’s old car: Clare and Priscilla as eager as young
colts turned out to pasture. Bill beaming like a rising
Himter’s Moon, his small son grave and a little pale.

‘Dan, I’m afraid, regards that noble animal horse about
the way I do,’ Diana said.

‘And how is that?’

‘Half a ton of feet, teeth, rollmg eyes, practical jokes. We
like them best in bronze or porcelain.’

He laughed — well, almost laughed, chuckled anyway —
and asked, ‘Does Bill know?’

‘About me. Not about Dan. He just knows Dan holds
on by the reins. A disgrace to a Shatswell.’

‘Worse than kleptomania,’ agreed Nick solemnly.

She had for the moment the sense that they were ap-
proaching each other; as if the next minute he might treat her
like a friend, not like a district visitor. Perhaps he might

256

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

have if they had not been interrupted by the return of the
wrestler with his entourage.

Perhaps it was only the fact that the light struck full on
him instead of being behind him that made it seem as if
Magee’s face had turned gray. Perhaps it was only the hos-
pital pallor and the gray stubble on his chin. He seemed
cheerful enough, joking with the orderlies, advising them how
to lift him, threatening to pitch them into the river. He suc-
ceeded iu making the nurse temper the natural vinegar of
her expression with a Httle olive oil of kindness. Her voice
in her last few remarks sounded hardly at all like a police-
woman examining a prisoner.

‘ So you let her sit down at last! ’ Magee remarked with one
of his winks.

His face had lost most of its gray look now that he was
back in bed again. It must have been the light, Diana
thought.

‘But this time I’m really going,’ she said.

‘Back to Paul Revere Square?’

‘Yes. Do you know it?’

‘I would hope I know it. I had a paper route there when I
was a boy. I wisht I had a dollar for every time I have
jumped those railings and climbed up on Paul Revere’s horse,
and this guy in the becoming red wrapper over there tagging
along behind. His uncle was a gentleman with a remarkable
power of language. If he caught me. Mostly he did not.
Being early in the mornings or dark evenings . . . Pretty soon
now those flowers will be out on the trees. Like strawberry
and vanilla in one cone.’

‘Magnolias? ’

‘Maybe. Ice-cream flowers, I called them. Summer eve-

NEW CELLOPHANE NEEDED

257

nings tlie leaves would be dusty. They planted cannas and
geraniums around Paul’s horse. I broke a canna once and he
caught me. Remember, Nick? ’

T remember.’

‘Blasted me into the river almost — and gave me five
bucks at Christmas just the same. I run away next year to
the War ... I was always big and husky. Besides, I did not
know my birthday, so it might be what I told them was true
enough. About how old I was. I did not enjoy that War on
accoimt of some sergeants I met. It was them made a pacifist
of me. But I learned to wrestle . . . Paul Revere Square.
Number 37 . . . He was a good guy. Took the Herald and the
Transcript and the New York Times and the Boston Ameri-
can, regular. Liked to strike an average, he said. And five
bucks at Christmas. No matter if you did have a horticul-
tural accident. He called it that. I wish I’d thought to send
him a ticket to one of my bouts. Too late now. I always
think of things too late.’

There was a note of weariness in his voice.

Nick Joceleyn said in a new tone, not the tolerant one used
for intrusive visitors: ‘He’d like to know you remembered
him, but he’s seen you wrestle. I forgot to tell you. I took
him. He didn’t know much about wrestling, but he went
because he remembered you jumping the railings. He saw
you throw some Pole around. Said it didn’t surprise him a
bit. You and I were the only idiots that thought jumping
that fence was an easy way of getting across the Square, he
said. Only, of course, I never did it with half a ton of Tran-
scripts on my back. He said you were always made of steel
and rubber.’

‘Did he? Well, so I was. So I was.’

258

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

As she walked back to the Square, Diana seemed to see a
tall figure with a bundle of papers at his back vault lightly
across the fence of spears.

The magnolia tree would open its ice-cream flowers before
long, but this spring no one, she thought, would vault the
railings.

VISIT TO THE SICK

The elevatoe that took Diana down brought up another
visitor. The elevator man had not noticed Diana. He had
not mentioned the weather — a subject about which elevator
men, sliding up and down in electrically lighted tunnels as
they do, have a surprising amount of information. This is a
mystery like why geese fly South. Old Nicholas Joceleyn
used to say that in the flying wedge there was always one old
gander with sacroiliac trouble; when he began to have sciatic
twinges, it was time to start for Florida. But that does not
explain why geese fly North. And throws no light at all on
elevator men.

To the new passenger this elevator man confided that it
was a fine day for the time of year. But they might have
rain later. Possibly he felt sciatic twinges. Who knows?

Not the passenger certainly. She was busy with her mirror,
reddening lips already like the stripes of a new flag, powder-
ing a steeply haughty nose with a new coating that made it
perfect for skiing — on a small scale, of course — passing a

260

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

blue comb througb her prematurely platinum hair. She wore
blue with a good deal of pink in surprising places. That is,
in Paul Revere Square it might have been surprising. The
elevator man was naturally too blase to be astonished by
stockings that brought to mind a boiled lobster. Or was it
strawberry sherbet they suggested.^* A glance at the accom-
panying gloves left one in doubt.

The elevator man amplified his remarks about atmospheric
conditions, but Miss Velma Libby did not trouble to answer
him.

An elevator man — as she often sagely remarked — can
get to the top easy enough, but does he stay there?

The remark was not original with Miss Libby, but the
laugh with which she always followed it was her own — a
sound a little like a finger-nail squeaking on a blackboard.

She dropped the comb back into her shiny blue bag, thus
giving the elevator man a view of a little of everything. He
had seen mto women’s bags before, but he had seldom seen
a fatter roll of dirtier bills. He watched her with respect as
she tottered oflF toward the swinging doors on the high heels
of tight pink-and-blue shoes.

Miss Libby walked past the three nurses who were laugh-
ing merrily under the sign that said, QUIET PLEASE. She
cocked her head proudly in its pyramid of lacquered straw
with the raspberry sink brush at the side and ignored
them.

‘Thank God, I am not a nurse,’ she thought devoutly.
‘Lnagiae wearing those funny caps ! ’

Miss Libby had escaped being a nurse by a fairly wide
margin — she had been until recently a hostess in a Dime-a-
Dance Hall, one of Fifty Seductive Girls with Glamor — but

VISIT TO THE SICK

261

her thankfulness was perfectly sincere. Anyone to whom the
idea occurred might have felt the same — patients, for in-
stance.

She knew her way to Crusher’s room without asking the
despised nurses. She had been twice before. Once he was too
sick to speak, or to understand what she wanted to tell him.
The other time that blind man was there. Not that he could
see her. He had sat runnmg his fingers over a book, in a
dopey way, like he was way off somewhere, so perhaps he
wasn’t listening, but you couldn’t tell with anyone like that.
He might just be putting on an act. She wanted to see
Crusher alone, but she’d have to tell him today anyhow . . .

The blind man was still there. Before she spoke he said,
‘Here’s Miss Libby, Crusher.’ He knew her step, it seemed.
It was uncanny. She didn’t like it. Still she spoke politely.
‘Hawayah, Mr. Jocelun,’ she said, in accents copied from a
screen favorite. Neither the favorite nor Miss Libby really
had adenoids. It was just a way of speaking.

Crusher woke up at that. He was dozing with his bald
head turned so that the scars showed up something fierce.
All lumpy, and kind of pink and purple.

She wished they had not taken the bandages off. It made
her sorry to see the scars, and she did not want to feel sorry.
She wanted to be sure he was all right again. His seamed
and disfigured head aroused some doubt. She choked down
her spasm of pity. Impatience rose in its place — a natural
sequence. After aU, what were a few purple ridges to a man
like Crusher, always in danger of having his ears torn off or
his nose broken — and liking it.

A picture of Crusher as she had seen him in the arena that
time — contorted, his face disfigured, looking, she thought.

262

PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

like some old alligator as lie squirmed and thumped and
grunted — rose in her mind and stiffened her resolution.

Her voice had its sharpest note as she observed: ‘Well,
have we got it pretty soft here! Nothing to do but sleep,
hahn.?’

She laughed the slate-pencil laugh again and sat down with
her back to the sourpuss with the black windows over his
eyes. She didn’t want that masked gaze turned on her. It
made her imeasy. As if it were any of his business if she gave
Crusher back his ring . . . And she must do it today, because
Mike . . .

There was something screwy about Crusher. He didn’t
have any snappy, wise-cracking greeting. He stared at her
in a dumb kind of way as if her lipstick had slipped or some-
thing.

All he said was, ‘You came. You came,’ in a kind of hoarse
mutter.

‘Sure I did,’ she said lightly, inspecting her makeup again,
and improving it a bit here and there — a touch more eye-
shadow, a shade more rouge.

He picked up the open bag and looked into it. She ought
not to have left it so near him, she realized. She dropped the
compact on the bed.

‘Whatcha doing, you big chimpanzee, hahn?’ she asked,
turning on the laugh again. ‘Who said you could look in my
bag?’

She tried to snatch it from him, all in fun, of course. In
the scnffle he turned it upside down. The contents rained on
the bed — the cigarettes, the bottle of Sommevol tablets
with the scrawled ‘One at night if wakeful’ on the label, the
dirty roll of hundreds and fifties that Mike Prelgousky had

VISIT TO THE SICK

263

given her to buy her ticket — and things; also crumpled bits
of cellophane and tinfoil, the flashlight picture of her and
Mike dancing together, the blue velvet box with the ring in it.

The whole story was there if Crusher only had the wit
to see it. First she’d hoped he wouldn’t, now she wished
he would, and have it over wdth. Let him get mad if he liked.
Only he was in that dopey mood. He didn’t seem to notice
anything — not even that she was not wearing his ring.

He picked up the money in one big hand, holding her off
with the other.

‘What a roll!’ he said. ‘PFAa^aroll! Dime-a-dance busi-
ness must be good.’

‘Gosh, Crusher, how strong you are!’ she squealed. ‘I
guess there’s nothing much wrong with you. You’ll be
wrestling someone your own weight soon, won’t you, hahn.^’

She wanted to believe it, so she did when he let her go and
said gently: ‘Yes, baby. I’ll be out of here before long.’

‘And you’ll be wrestling again soon?’

‘I expect so. It is kind of a habit I have got — wrestling.’

‘You’re telling me,’ she giggled, and began repairing her
makeup again. She found the blue comb in a crease in the
bedspread and ran it through her light, dry curls.

He had picked up the velvet box now and had opened it.
The stone in the ring was nothing to the one Mike Prel-
gousky had given her, but there was a clear fiery flash from it.

‘You’re not wearing your rmg,’ he said in his soft, hoarse
voice.

She stammered through her speech. She seemed to feel the
scornful black circles turned on her from the other bed.
Crusher did not look at her. He looked out at the river and
played with the things from her bag. She kept her voice low.

264

PAUL EEVEKE SQUAB

If she could have talked louder ahe could have made it soun
better, she thought.

After all. Crusher did not seem to care much. He took i
quietly. He even looked at Mike’s picture without gettin
sore. Said Mike was a good-looking guy. Which Mike cei
tainly was. In spite of being a Pole. And so short . . .

Crusher wouldn’t take the ring back. Keep it, he said, fo
a wedding gift. Have it set in some other form, or keep it t(
pawn. A piece of ice is always handy for that, he said, laugh
ing and sounding like himself. It’s a nice pebble, he said
turning it so it flashed, then tossing it to her, and wishing he.
luck.

She put it back in the box and began to pick up the things
off the bed and jam them back into the bag. Her hands were
shaky. She broke a finger-nail, caught it shutting her com-
pact, and swore a little- She need not have been so nervous

‘Pour yourself a glass of water,’ Crusher said. "The glass
is clean. I have not drank out of it.’

"I would not of cared if you had,’ Velma Libby said, and
went around to the other side of the bed and poured it out.

Ts there any crews out on the river.? ’ he asked.

It was nice of him to give her a chance to look away.
Crusher was like that. Thoughtful. She looked out, though,
and told him there wasn’t one in sight. * She finished the
water and put the rest of the things back into her bag.

"Kiss me good-bye, Velma,’ he said, and she did, not saying
anything about how the bristles scrubbed her cheek. Mike
shaved twice a day, otherwise he would have had five-
o’clock shadow of which the magazines and Velma did not
approve.

"Good luck. Crusher,’ she said. "And plenty of falls — for
the other guys. You’ll always win, I bet. I bet.’

VISIT TO THE SICK

‘The last fight I had I have won/ he said.

She knew that, of course. It was coming home from it he
was run over. She and Mike had been to see it. Mike had
made half a grand on it. He’d believed her when she told
him Crusher was honest and couldn’t be bribed.

‘Well, good luck,’ she said again. She went away without
looking at the blind man or speaking to him.

It was not until she was on the train that she found she had
lost her bottle of Sommevol tablets.

11

PIRACY IN MUDTIME

The next day was the one that Peter always called the da
of the Lobanov kidnaping. What else, after all, can you ca
it when a talented young painter — a Prince too, don’t fo
get that — is walking along Paul Revere Square wonderin
darkly whether he would feel any better if he kicked tl
Statue, is invited to go for a ride in a vehicle that looks as if
could not stagger a hundred yards, and suddenly finds himse
in Vermont? Well, anyway, Peter called it kidnaping. E
also, in one of his bitterer moments, called his self-appoint€
chauffeur an unscrupulous, domineering, impulsive pirate.

He was wrong about this. Diana was not impulsive.

She had in fact taken considerable trouble about this e:
pedition.

There seemed nothing sinister to Peter about it at firs
He was walking along entertaming the dark and heretic
thought already mentioned, when he heard a grinding ratt
behind him. It was punctuated by a hoarse yap that mac
him turn his head as the car gi*ated to a stop and stood pan

PIRACY IN MDDTIME

267

ing beside him. Its first seven years had left their mark on it.
The bumpers were tied on with clothesline, the windshield
was stayed with surgeon’s plaster, the outer handle had
gone from one door and the inner from another, but it had a
valiant air. Someone had lavished blue paint of an electric
shade upon it; enlivened it further with scarlet wheels. A
scarlet stripe wobbled gallantly around it. The leather on
its sagging seats and what was left of its chromium plate
shone gaily in the spring sunshine.

It was the loveliest of days. Even Peter morosely recog-
nized that. It lent the ear a eertain misleading charm. And
it did not exactly disfigure Diana.

She looked, Peter decided sourly, as pretty as if she had en-
dorsed a cigarette and had been lithographed in full color.
There was a good deal of pale gold about her — her hair and
her sweater and her skirt; and of brown — her hat and her
shoes and her eyes ; also of dull gold — in the shadows of her
hair and the dancing lights in her eyes, and in a rough tweed
coat lying on the back seat. A sort of peachblow pink
cropped up in the coat every now and then and in her cheeks
too.

‘You look like a goldfinch sitting on an American flag,’
Peter said in a cross voice. He scowled too, but she did not
notice it, or mention that he had avoided her ever since that
preposterous scene in the library. With the idea of preventing
her from referring to it he went on hastily: ‘Where did you
get this object.?’

‘You mean Chippy Hacky?’

‘What?’

‘My husband. Chippy Hacky. He bites.’ Diana explained
helpfully. ‘The name of my new car. A literary allusion.

268

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

To the works of the author of “Peter Rabbit.” You wouldn’t
know — being a foreigner.’

‘Oh, it’s a car/’ Peter exclaimed. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

‘Get in,’ Diana said.

, Peter put his foot over the door and got in. They rattled
out of the Square, chugged fearlessly into the traffic, neatly
performed evolutions that took them over the Pepperpot
Bridge.

Diana explained that she had bought the car to end the
depression. Someone, she said, who did not already own a
car had to buy one. She was a patriot. Having no car, she
had bought a car, the ultimate car, the car that unlocked all
transactions up to the shining, stream-Hned monster at the
other end; the key in the log jam, in short — Chippy Hacky.
For thirty-seven and a half dollars.

Peter said she had paid too much. They disputed this
point until much of the Mystic Valley Parkway had stut-
tered away under the wheels.

‘It will save train fare to Vermont,’ Diana asserted.

Peter exposed this fallacy.

‘Not for one person. It’s always cheaper for one person to
go by train.’

‘Yes, but there are two of us. There’s your fare too,’
Diana said, putting Chippy Hacky into an amazing burst of
speed.

‘But I’m not going to Vermont.’

Peter repeated, loud enough to be heard above the tires
kissing the concrete, and the fenders and bumpers shagging
toward each other, and the conscientious puffing of the en-
gine, and the jack under the back seat saying harsh words to
the wrench, that he was not going to Vermont.

PIRACY IN MUDTIME

‘Oh yes, you are. And hold on to your hat!*

Peter held on to his hat.

They did the next ten miles in silence — if anything con-
nected with Chippy Hacky can be described as silence.
Peter looked for red lights. They were all green. He looked*
for policemen. The policemen had gone home to lunch. He
hoped for a puncture, but proud were Chippy Hacky’s tires
such a precious freight to bear. They bore it past hotdog
stands, through the fried-clam zone, past the castle walls of
Methuen, under the private overpass for cows with one
perfect Jersey posing on it against the blue sky, up the hUls
behind Manchester.

The air began to freshen. Clouds sailed higher. There
were plowed fields and shadowy masses of purple against
the horizon. Trees near Boston had been veiled with a haze
of buds and new leaves. Here they showed an etched tracery
of twigs against the sky. Across the valleys the dark pine
plumes floated out of a violet mist.

He might, Peter knew well enough, simply jump out of the
car in a soft spot, but he was not really much in earnest about
escaping. Somehow the fog of boredom and weariness and
self-hatred of the last week was lifting.

Snow topped the hills above the blue glitter of Newfound
Lake. Streams went rushing with a roar that quieted Chippy
Hacky’s voice. Diana told Peter their names politely.

Peter had vowed himself to silence and stuck to his plan —
more or less. Unfortunately Diana did not seem depressed
by his reticence. She drove with extraordinary skill; he could
not help noticing it. The little car never went very fast —
the effect of speed was chiefly the noise and rush of wind —
but then it never had to slow down. It skirted holes and

270

PAUL BEVERE SQUARE

frost heaves neatly; sent the curves flowing behind it as
smoothly as satin off a new roll. Diana sang as they coasted
down the long hill into Orford. She had not much of a voice,
but Peter was obliged to admit that she hit the right note.
Her singing and driving had a gay effect, rather like a young
bobolink practicing song and flight all at once.

The Connecticut was too full to be noisy about it. There
were patches of snow on the rocks that frown above it on the
Vermont side. Every twig on the elms showed in the quiet
mirror of the river.

Diana swimg Chippy Hacky across the long bridge and
headed north.

‘Well, we’re in Vermont,’ she remarked unnecessarily.

Peter stopped being a Trappist, became instead a cross
small boy. Slumped in his seat, hands thrust in his pockets,
he said, scowling, ‘I suppose you think this is funny.’

Not at all, Diana said. Since they were engaged they
ought to be alone sometimes. It was impossible to have any
privacy in Paul Revere Square, so she had planned this little
trip. As a surprise.

Peter growled that so was it surprising to step on a tack.
And that they were not engaged. He looked as if he were
afraid Diana would take advantage of their comparative
solitude. There was no one in sight but a farmer leaning on a
hoe and a last year’s scarecrow leaning on a rake. And three
unscared crows in a spruce. And a woman hanging a quilt on
a line.

He need not have worried. They had turned into a dirt
road and Diana was busy choosing the best pair of ruts for
the negotiation of a mudhole quite a lot smaller than the
pond m the Public Garden. Peter hoped they would be stuck

PIRACY IN MUDTIME

271

in it, but Diana had chosen the right ruts. They churned
through it, flinging liquid mud around the landscape. They
were not stuck in any of the seventeen succeeding mudholes
either. Mudtime was early this year.

As they crossed the Orange Mountains, Diana asked
politely if Peter liked the country.

T don’t know,’ he said. ‘I never saw any country before.’

‘Never saw any before?’

‘Well, you can’t call Palm Beach country.’

‘I thought you’d been in Switzerland.’

‘Switzerland isn’t country. It’s scenery,’ Peter told her.

He had forgotten to scowl for several miles. It was impos-
sible for Peter to be consistently disagreeable. He soimded
only slightly peevish as he remarked that he had no tooth-
brush.

‘You can buy one at Wilbur’s store,’ Diana told him.

‘Not without money.’

‘Haven’t you any money?’

‘Left my wallet in my other suit.’

‘That,’ said Diana, ‘will save me the trouble of stealing it.
I’d planned how, but it would be more ladylike not to. I will
buy you a toothbrush myself.’

‘Where is this store?’ Peter asked nervously.

‘In East Alcott.’

‘You say that as if you meant “It’s in the promised land.” ’

‘ Oh it is, it is,’ Diana assured him.

East Alcott is a crossroads hamlet high on the slope of what
in some states would be a mountain. In Vermont it is a hill.
Peter was shown East Alcott from across the valley. From
there it was chiefly some splashes of red, some cubes of white,
and an ochre-colored oblong. The ochre color was the paint.

27*

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

hardly fifty years old yet, on Wilbur’s general store. The
barns were not only red — the only proper barn color — but
one of them was sixteen-sided and the other circular.

They both had cupolas (pronounced cupalos in East
Alcott) and the silos near them were only slightly less mag-
nificent. Sam Wilbur owned the circular barn. He lavished
white paint on the cupola and gold paint on the ram on the
weather vane. For the last ten years he had been thinking of
painting the store, but there had been a diflficulty about it.
Bertha wanted it white to match every house in East Alcott
except the Red Cottage. Sam wanted it red to match the
bam. In the meantime the yellow ochre with maroon trim-
mings continued to repel rain and snow and hail and sun-
shine with customary eflBciency, sometimes all in one day.

Chippy Hacky took the hill gallantly. Wet clay slithered
imder his wheels. Stony gullies opened in front of him.
Frost boiled out of mudholes and ran merrily in patterns
that would make a snake dizzy. The little car snorted along
without complaint, surmounted whalebacks of bare rock,
drove in and out of a field that was dryer than the road —
as much as chocolate souffle is than chocolate sauce — and
at last panted into the swamp in front of Wilbur’s store.

Its arrival caused little commotion. The leaner and
lankier of the two horses hitched to the rail switched his tail
and kicked without much conviction at the ancient buggy
behind him. The fatter of the two men tipped back against
the wall in the spring sunshine opened one eye. Seeing only
some city folks he closed it again. Like the unusually warm
weather, city folks were out of season. It was bad enough to
see them in June.

Sam Wilbur, a man of few words, had apparently used
most of his daily quota.

PIRACY IN MUDTIME

«73

He said only, ‘Pleased t’ meet you,’ when Diana said that
this was her cousin Peter Lobanov.

Sam’s head and handsome features made him look dig-
nified even in his faded blue jeans and shapeless brown coat.
He was shorter than Peter, who was no giant, but his power-
ful shoulders and arms made short work of handling crates
and barrels.

Some people say he could pick Bertha up and carry her up-
stairs — if he had a mind to. Others maintain that he could
not. A third group — mean-spirited neutrals — take the
ground that maybe he could or maybe he couldn’t, but any-
way look at the stairs! Pesky, narrow things curling up out
of the front hall like a shaving. Bertha can barely get up
them. Has to turn sidewise.

She sleeps downstairs in the state bedroom near the front
door — the one with the sunburst quilt on the maple high-
posted bed. She hardly ever goes upstairs, and there are
some who wonder whether the hired girl ever gives the rooms
up there a real going over. Still there was no dust — that you
could see anyway — when the Relief Corps met there last
fall.

Whatever Bertha Wilbur’s faults might be, lack of hearti-
ness was not among them. All Vermonters, Peter discovered,
are not tongue-tied. He felt suddenly warmed and soothed
by this vast woman with the bright blue eyes and bright
brown hair. His crossness at having been carried off by Diana
into this mudhole vanished suddenly. Mrs. Wilbur laughed
at something he said and he realized that he had been witty.
It was not a loud laugh, considering her size. It was more like
a rather mild northwest breeze on a Real East Alcott Day.

This was the end of one of those days. The wind had

274

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

dropped, leaving the elm earved in brown against clear blue.
Purple light began to move up out of the hollows of the hills.
The sun slipped behind Couching Lion’s shoulder, threw a
pink flush on his forehead. The sky changed to pink, to gold,
to pale primrose, to a brightness without color, the mountain
dark against it.

The stage rattled in. It creaked and splashed mud. Lights
went on in the store. The occupants of the porch stirred out
of their slumbers and went into the store yawning. Stars
came out and shone in the water in the ruts. People began to
come for the mail: small boys in rubber boots; women in
clean print dresses with fur-collared coats over them; men in
leather jackets. April evenings are cold in East Alcott, even
on a day too warm for the season.

The stove drew them with the red glow behind its doors of
mica, with the cheerful roar under its domed top. Smells of
damp wool and barns and fields mixed with the store flavor
of kerosene and cheese. Bertha Wilbur sorted the letters
with her big soft hands. She filled the little post office com-
pletely. The boys could see pieces of her through the windows
of the boxes. They were bright squares with small flowers
like pieces for a patchwork quilt. Bertha had a pleasant way
of giving out letters; as if she were a hostess for the United
States.

It did not take seven minutes to dish up supper after she
had left the store. Peter was not hungry, as he had told
Diana with frigid politeness when she had offered to buy him
a sandwich. It was annoying having no money, as he had
discovered when he had contemplated jumping out of the
car and hiking to the nearest railroad. He had often been
told by his mother that a man should take all the things out

PIRACY IN MUDTIME

275

of his pockets at night and lay them in neat rows on the
bureau. He began to think there might be something in it,
only, somehow, he really wasn’t much annoyed. He might
as well be here as anywhere.

Confronted by Bertha Wilbur’s corn muffins, by fluffy
baked potatoes, by salt pork with sour-cream gravy, by
pools of new maple syrup — in East Alcott they eat syrup
out of a saucer with a spoon — by apple pie and hunks of
devil’s-food cake, by big pitchers of warm milk and three
other kinds of cake and thick cream and home-canned rasp-
berries, he managed, in Bertha’s phrase, to make out a sup-
per. And he slept, in a nightshirt borrowed from Sam Wil-
bur, in the prim clean room imder the eaves, as he had not
slept for weeks.

Diana had bought him a toothbrush. It gave him that
homesick feeling best produced by the xmfamiliar curve of a
toothbrush and a newspaper in a strange city, but he scoured
his teeth cheerfully just the same. His image in the wavy
mirror with the pond lilies painted on it convinced him that
he was not the type for a toga. He cast aside the flowing folds
of Sam Wilbur’s nightshirt and splashed himself with icy
water from a pitcher with brown roses on it. He did not
splash the wall because there was a splash protector behind
the washstand. It had sparrows and bulrushes embroidered
on it in red.

A New England primitive, Peter decided, running his hand
over his chin.

Diana’s generosity had not extended to a razor.

‘I’ll grow a beard,’ he threatened, ‘and sweep it up over
my ears. Quick, Dmitri, the vodka . . .’

276

PAUL EEVERE SQUARE

He applied water to his obstinate hair and smoothed it
down with his hands. It had already won out by the time he
reached the dining-room.

Sam Wilbur padded through the kitchen in his red socks.
He had left his bam boots outside the door. He set a pail
of soapsudsy milk on the table. He washed his face at the
kitchen sink and combed his hair in front of the mirror in
the case of the dining-room clock. He looked at his Satur-
day shave and decided it would do. Perhaps he had noticed
Peter’s new beard. He acknowledged Peter’s good morning
wi^ a benign nod. There was an appraising twinkle that
kept the kindliness of the look from being merely the glance
of general benevolence that Sam might cast over a field of
growing crops, or on a child playing with a kitten.

The shrewd gleam lighting the benignity gave Peter the
feeling that a small bright searchlight was turned on him, on
his life, on his work. Oddly enough it did not increase his
sense of futility, or his bitter resentment at having let life
make a fool of him, or his shame at his inability to get himself
out of the net in which his mother had entangled him.

Peter had suddenly a sense of well-being and competence.
,He would find Diana and end this ridiculous situation.
•Weakness had got him into it, had kept him in it. As he ate
Ihis second stack of griddlecakes with Bertha Wilbur’s
breezy comments in his ears and Sam’s shrewd look turned
Ion him, he felt suddenly strengthened. It was an unreason-
able feeling. Nothing had happened to justify it, but it was
as actual as the sound of Sam Wilbur inhaling syrup.

There was no place for Diana at the table. She was still
asleep, he thought, with the complacency of the early riser.

‘Miss Joceleyn is not down yet,’ he remarked.

PIRACY IN MUDTIME ^71

"She’s went/ Sam Wilbur said, clouding dark amber coffee
with yellow cream.

"Gone out somewhere?’

"Boston.’

"Gone to Boston! And left me here? Why, she can’t do
that to me.’

"Has. Seems so.’

Sam Wilbur did not look at the angry young man. Sam
stabbed his fork into a potato in a white dish near Peter,
dug out the hot fluff, mashed dried beef in cream into it.

"But what shall I do? I can’t stay here. I’ve no money
even to buy food.’

Peter had pushed his chair back. He was standing up now.
So was his hair. As usual he had pulled at it in his annoyance.
Since he always looked like a cross kitten when he was angry,
he was not impressive.

Sam Wilbur was not impressed.

"Painter?’ he inquired between mouthfuls.

"Yes.’

"Paint the store. Needs it. Board you.’

"I don’t paint buildings. I paint pictures.’

"Steve Joceleyn painted pictures. Painted my silo too.
Steve,’ said Sam Wilbur in a burst of eloquence, "was a good
painter.’

Bertha Wilbur intervened with a last leaning tower of
griddlecakes and the information that Diana thought her
cousin would be real good. When he got the hang of it. She
thought it would be a nice change for Peter. She’d had the
idea because of her father. He always said outside painting
kind of rested him. She’d thought Peter might like to help
in the store too. "She’s coming back for you,’ Bertha con-
cluded soothingly, "after a while.’

278

PAUL KEVEEE SQUABE

Peter bit off a growl. There was no need of being rude to
the Wilburs. They had not kidnaped him.

Tf you could cash a small check for me/ he said to Sam
Wilbur, T could go. I haven’t my book, but I suppose you
can let me have a blank check.’

Sam chewed slowly on his last four cakes, finally said with
a nod in the general direction of Boston, ‘She wouldn’t ap-
prove.’

‘We promised Diana we wouldn’t give you any money.
Not till she comes back. Of course we’ll pay you for your
time. Thirty-five cents an hour and your board,’ Bertha
Wilbur said. ‘She wants you should stay and we’ll be real
glad to have you. We never had a Prince before,’ she added,
with her jovial laugh. ‘It’s kind of cute to think of a Prince
painting the store. We’ll have it white, Sam.’

Peter listened dizzily to the Wilburs discussing .the color of
the store. The argument was twenty years old, but they
went at it heartily, Bertha with jubilance, waving the white
banner with green trimmings; Sam with quiet obstinacy
nailing the maroon and ochre ensign to the mast.

Take three coats of white, he asserted.

Two and a touch-up, Bertha said, would do. With a little
black in the first one. It was remarkable how much black
you could put into white and it would still be white com-
pared to anything dark-colored. Same as a white lie looks
kind of light-complected till you put it up against the truth.
Wasn’t that so. Prince?

Peter liked the way she called him Prince. It sounded as if
she might be speaking to the Newfoundland pup, a dog like a
black pony, only curlier. The pup spent a good deal of time
trying to get into Bertha’s lap. In this he showed good judg-

PIRACY IN MUDTIME

279

ment, Bertha’s lap being the only one in East Alcott suit-
able for a lap pony. Bertha slapped him genially and called
him Duke.

‘We’re all royalty around here,’ she announced with a
chuckle. ‘Come on, Prince. I’ll give you some overalls and
brushes. Now, Sam, stop jabbering about those colors.’
(Sam had breathed two words: Maroon. Ochre.) ‘Ethan
Allen mixed ’em and we lost the receipt. Besides, we got the
white and green. I was aiming to surprise you, but you might
as well know. It seems Diana’s come into a little money.
She gave the paint to us. Come on. Prince.’

Prince Peter Lobanov, formerly of the Moscow Lobanovs,
and of points, north, east, south, and west, including Paul
Revere Square, came on. He put on overalls and a cap suit-
able for a jockey. It had ‘Wilbur’s General Store’ embossed
on it. He carried ladders. He pried up the lids of cans. He
mixed paint with a paddle cut from a shingle. Bertha Wilbur
told him how.

He hstened meekly, but his meekness did not prevent him
from mentioning Diana unfavorably.

‘What did she do it for? Why should she drag me up here
and leave me?’ he asked, standing up suddenly and letting
the paint run down the paddle. ‘I’ll walk home. Hitch-hike.
I don’t have to stay here and paint.’

‘You got the cans open,’ Bertha Wilbur observed sensibly.
‘Don’t let that paint drip on your shoes. Prince. Keep stir-
ring. Don’t you like it here?’

Peter looked out the barn door across the browns and grays
and purples of the landscape. Spring had touched it, though
a stranger could hardly read the signs. Yet even Peter could
feel that the awakening would come soon. He could feel it in

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the soft brush of air against his cheek, in the soft eyes of
Jersey calves pushing their heads through the fence. He
could see it in the pieces of blue looking-glass in the puddles;
hear what the crows were saying about it.

‘Yes, I like it,’ he said slowly. ‘I just don’t like being
dragged up here because she gets a crazy idea in her head and
has to do it in the next five minutes. Too sudden.’

‘’Twasn’t so sudden,’ Bertha Wilbur said. ‘Must be a
week ago she wrote and said she was bringing you up to
paint the place and to get the paint. Of course I let her have
it wholesale.’

‘You mean she planned it more than a week ago? Why,
that was before — why, it makes it all the worse.’

Bertha Wilbur said there was no pleasing a man. First
Prince didn’t like it because Diana seemed kind of hasty and
now he was mad because she was foresighted.

‘But men never did have much logic . . . Get down, Duke.
Don’t lick the paint. It’s bad for you . . . Put in a little
more black and some turpentine. Prince. Besides, she didn’t
mean to leave you. She meant to stay and help paint. It
was something she heard on the radio.’

‘What was it?’

‘She didn’t say. There’s a little set in her room. She had
it turned on awhile. Early this morning, just when Sam was
getting up to milk. She knocked at my door. Said she had to
go to Boston early, because of some news she’d heard, but
she’d be back for you and you could paint the store, and not
to give you any money.’

Even after he read the paper he could hardly see why she
needed to mix herself up in this particular affair. It wasn’t
as if she knew Nick well.

Paul Revebe Square was naturally upset. The publicity
was painful — those headlines about Crusher Magee’s death,
his will (an ill-expressed document), the talk about the
operation on Nick Joceleyn’s eyes. There was something
indecent about it: a Joceleyn owing his vision to a dead
wrestler, one who had once had a paper route in the Square.
The Square did not feel precisely that it would have been
better for Nick to have stayed blind, but it did seem that the
whole thing might have been presented in a more dignified way.

The words ‘Double Corneal Transplant’ — first a phrase
having a sort of respectability simply because no one knew
exactly what it meant — became sickeningly familiar. Even
the Transcrift dug up the picture of Nick helping Madame
Chiang Kai-Shek into a plane. For once it found no space to
mention that she was a Wellesley graduate. The picture
was mostly helmet and a blurred profile. Nick had a way of
turning his head as the camera clicked. No one of the pic-
tures raked out of the files showed him full-face. The one

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

with his arm in the sling came the nearest to doing so, but
even in that the eyes were turned away. It was hard to see
any resemblance between that strong figure, caught always
in motion, and the quiet man fingering a page of Braille;
harder still to think of him in the dark, waiting.

Naturally Eben was aimoyed with Diana for going to
Sidney (Crusher) Magee’s funeral. Eben still regarded Diana
as his property. Her engagement to Peter was nonsense, as
he would show Peter as soon as he got home. The blue-and-
silver giant only looked morose and said Prince Lobanov was
out of town. Peter certainly wasn’t a very devoted fiance,
Eben thought. Peter ought not to have been out of town
while Diana was making herself conspicuous at wrestlers’
funerals. The only woman there. And giving her name.

She ought to have said it was Smith. Well, no, perhaps
not Smith. No one would believe it, seeing Diana. Some-
thing non-committal. Jackson, say. Or Richards. And why
did she have to say that the Joceleyn family felt grateful
to the dead man? That Mrs. Joceleyn would have come her-
self, but that she was with her son. And that she — Diana
— had a great respect and admiration for the wrestler?
Talking like that! To reporters! Why, any child knew
better.

Under this official annoyance, voiced freely to all who
would listen and to others who did not, lay buried in Eben’s
mind a deeper uneasiness hardly defined even to himself.
Yet the questions it raised kept thrusting themselves up into
his mind. How did she know this wrestler except by visiting
Nick in the hospital? Visiting him often? Sitting beside
him? Reading to him? That voice of hers . . . Nick wasn’t
deaf . . . And this Magee would tell Nick how she looked.

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283

Already, Eben thought, with a strange feeling that pricked
his skin and burned in his throat, Nick would have been using
the dead man’s eyes. Disgusting, gruesome . . . And if the
comeal transplant were successful . . . even one eye . . . He had
crossed Nick off, but . . . Well, Eben still had a weapon.
Fortunately it would do for Nick as well as for Peter for
whose benefit it had been prepared. Bill Shatswell, Eben
shrugged off. Then — for he was always thorough — he
thought he had better just mention it to Singleton, who could
be trasted to spread it. He must see him soon.

Suppose the stock market . . . Pump priming . . . That
wild man at Washington . . . But not too soon. He must
tell Nick first. As soon as Nick was well enough.

Eben telephoned the hospital every day.

Eleanor Joceleyn was with her son when they took the
bandages off his eyes.

The doctor said: ‘ Count my fingers, please. How many am
I holding up?’

There was a strange electric silence in the room. Then
Nick said, in a voice that sounded as if he had been running:
‘Four on the left hand. Three on the right.’

‘Fine,’ the doctor said, ‘fine. Back into the darkness now
with you, sir, but we’ll have you reading before you’re much
older.’

He talked some more, tactfully, while he was putting on the
fresh bandage, to hide the fact that Eleanor Joceleyn was
crying. She was doing it very quietly and she stopped almost
at once. It hardly counted against her, the doctor decided.
She had been a good sort through the whole thing . . .

His last weeks in the hospital were the hardest of all for

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Nick Joceleyn. Although there was, he told himself, nothing
to look forward to, he was impatient to leave. He would not
go back to China. His job, such as it was, had been taken by
someone else. Probably he could have a plane and drop
bombs on people, but he could not do it, even if they were
Japs.

Something strange had happened to him in his months of
darkness. He no longer wanted adventure. He wanted a
life of order: something where he was at a desk at nine o’clock
and left it at five. Something clean and decent and humdrum.
He did not think it was just a desire to keep his skin whole.
It was more that he had been too young for his age for a long
time and had suddenly grown up. He was sorry he hadn’t
done it in time to help his uncle. It was too late now. Joce-
leyn & Company wouldn’t need him. Even his old room in
the Square was closed to him. He would never go back to it.
He might not have a job and his money was practically gone
now — when he had paid for the operation there’d be just
about nothing left — but he’d have his eyes and his self-
respect. He’d find something to do. When he didn’t feel so
tired . . .

This feeling of being fit only to be thrown on the ash heap
would pass, like other feelings in their time; like the horror he
felt when he first realized what Crusher had done. That was
lightening now, changing slowly from being an intolerable
burden to something that was only painfully sad, painfully
beautiful. There were times now when he stopped his endless
checking and rechecking of that last day to find some point
at which he could have seen into his friend’s mind and have
stopped him.

Yet how could he have known about the Sommevol tablets

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285

taken from Velma Libby’s bag when even the nurses with
their eyesight and efficiency had not found them? Of course
he had realized that Velma had thrown the wrestler over, but
that had not seemed an unmixed blessing to anyone who had
heard Velma’s voice. Probably she was pretty, but he knew
she wasn’t beautiful. Beauty was something you could detect
more easily without your eyes than with them. Crusher,
he had decided, was well rid of the girl. But Crusher had
concealed from him two other blows that had fallen on him
that day: the letter saying that the trucking company and
the insurance company would do nothing for him, since he
was clearly at fault in the accident; the doctor’s verdict that
he would never walk again. If he had only told instead of sit-
ting there covering those pages with his curiously neat, prim
handwriting . . .

As Nick’s eyes healed, there came with the healing an ac-
ceptance, not only of the gift of sight itself, but of Magee’s
letter. It began to seem possible now to receive the sacrifice
as simply as Crusher had made it; as if the matter were as
straightforward and natural as his friend had tried to make it
seem. Yet even read by Eleanor Joceleyn’s voice it had been
hard to accept at first.

You see it’s this way, Nick, I am going anyway. I suppose I
am acting yellow, but too much has happened and I cannot
take it. Do not think too hard of me about that. I just cannot
see living in a wheel chair and on charity for maybe forty
years. I am on my way out anyway, like I said. You have
been a good pal. Do not think I do not know about how you
have paid for my room these last two weeks so I would not
have to go in the ward.

You see the trucking people have decided it was all my fault
and they will pay me nothing without a lawsuit, and the

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trouble is I guess they are right because I was jay-walking all
right trying to get quickly to where I had promised to meet
[something scratched out] a friend of mine. So there is no use
in going to law and I have told that sticky little ambulance-
chaser so and I have paid him what he said I owed him for
doing nothing and there is enough left in my wallet to pay the
hospital. It gives me some pleasure to know that that great
legal brain did not kid me into thinking he could get me one
hundred grand. I am not so dumb as I look and I do not owe
anyone anything. It is something to start in like I did with
nothing and have a good time like I have had and come out
even. Now I have not got much to leave anyone, Nick, but if
I had, say, an old overcoat that you could use I would want
you to have it and wear it without feeling that I would ever
want it back. It is the same with my eyes. I am through with
them, so you take them, pal, and use them. And when you see
anything pretty like one of these crews on the river digging
whirlpools and the sun flashing on the wet oars and their backs
going all together, well, figure we are looking at it together,
see?

I have found out your eyes were ready for the operation and
I have written the doctor to explain things to him and not to
tell you till after you are well. Also I enclose a note to Miss
Joceleyn to thank her for bringing me the flowers and that
swell basket of fruit and listening to me talk. It was a pleasure
to meet her and Miss Desmond and your mother. I have not
seen many ladies to know them, but those three are the real
article I figure. Be sure you fix it so they do not feel bad about
this. I was going anyway.

So good-bye, Nick, and good luck.

Crusher

Nick had said he would not go back to Paul Revere Square.
He stuck to it — until after BilFs visit.

Bill was a relief. He never tried to be tactful. He did not

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287

avoid the subject of the operation, or of Crusher Magee.
Bill was as simple and straightforward as Magee himself.
He remembered the paper boy who had jumped over the
railings and he had seen Magee wrestle. He hadn’t known
they were the same person, though. Wished he had. It was
the girl throwing him over that gave him the final throw. Bill
thought. Though having seen her picture. Bill felt it was
hard to understand. He would sooner meet a barbed-wire
fence while he was jumping a stone wall, he said. He added
that love was queer anyway. There was Polly moping
around. And he had felt a bit off his feed for a week after
Diana turned him down, only now he was getting over it.
And probably Polly would in time. Only of course it was
harder. When you’d played store with somebody. And kept
his pet snakes for him when he was hauled off to Palm Beach,
and mixed his paints, washed his brushes . . .

‘What is all this about Polly.?’ Nick asked.

‘You didn’t know Diana was engaged to Peter?’

‘You mean that Peter’s thrown Polly over and is engaged
to Miss Joceleyn?’

‘Bight, and very neatly put. It’s a secret, of course. The
secret everyone knows.’

‘I wouldn’t think it of — Peter.’

Bill did not notice either the distaste in Nick’s voice or
the little pause before Peter’s name.

‘I expect,’ he said, ‘that dear Aunt Sophia put the thumb-
screws on him. She always knew how pretty well.’

Nick agreed to that. Princess Lobanov was born a few
centuries too late, he said. In Spain around 1492 she would
have been a knock-out.

Bill said she was a knock-out anyway. Always ready wit!

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the rabbit punch. She was the kind that would dope some-
body else's horse. If she were a wrestler she’d gouge eyes.

Even to Bill this figure of speech did not seem tactful as he
heard himself say it. He stumbled out an apology. He was a
clumsy oaf, he said.

^Don’t bother/ Nick said gently. Tm not going through
life quivering over those words.’

He looked, however, white and tired.

‘When do they let you out of here?’ Bill asked.

‘Tomorrow, I think. If the doctor’s satisfied with me.’

‘What you need,’ Bill said, ‘is a week’s hunting.’

For several reasons Bill’s prescription was not practical.
Instead, in spite of his resolution, Nick found himself back
in his uncle’s house. His mother assumed that he would come
and was so happy over it that when it came to the point, he
couldn’t hurt her.

It wouldn’t matter for a little while, he told himself. And
as Diana was now engaged to Peter, no one could think now
that he came because of her money. Perhaps, too, in his old
room this weary sense of not belonging anywhere in the world
would lift.

It increased rather than lessened with the healing of his
eyes. Strangely, his months of darkness began to seem like a
time of peace, of refuge. He had been surrounded, he realized
now, with patience and kindness. If he had known no other
world than his hospital room, he would have been certain
that it was a room where kindness ruled.

Perhaps, thinking over what he had known, East and
West, kindness, personal kindness, did rule. Certainly it
was the commonest human trait. Only next commonest
was — cruelty. Which you would find uppermost you could

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289

never tell, in the light. Collectively it was often cruelty.
In the dark it was likely to be kindness. WeU, that was some-
thing to have discovered.

Another gift of the dark was honesty with himself. In the
light he had always acted without weighing motives. The
dark had given him time to know himself. During those
long hours he had assessed his strength and weakness. So
he was honest in admitting that he was going back to Paul
Revere Square because he must see her once, the girl with the
velvety voice whose clothes had a faint fragrance of may-
flowers. He had heard descriptions enough of her — from
his mother, from Burwell, from Singleton, and from —
Crusher. It was easy, if you had plenty of time and darkness,
to lead people to talk about Diana. You didn’t have to ask
questions.

Only somehow, in what they told him, the skinny, funny
little girl with the pigtails and the wistful gaze, as she pulled
off smoked glasses to look up at him, was gone.

USEFUL INFORMATION

He knew it was she before be saw ber. There was notbing
strange about that. He bad known ber footstep since ber first
visit and there bad been seven visits in all. Even a moron
could have learned that light, quick step after seven times
of bearing it coming down the linoleum. And bearing it go-
ing away.

He was in bis uncle’s smoking-room in the dark, lying on
Nicholas Joceleyn’s sagging old sofa. His eyes couldn’t stand
light yet for any length of time. He bad bis bands cupped
over them. He jumped to bis feet as she came in. She drew
in her breath sharply and switched on the light.

He stood there, dazzled, shading bis eyes with bis band. It
was only for a moment that they faced each other in that
strange silence. She pressed the switch again and the light
went off, but be had seen her. Rockets and comets stung
against his eyelids. They faded, but her face was still there.

No one, no one, had told him anything about her.

She said in the low, velvety voice he remembered: ‘For-

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291

give me, please. I was startled, hearing someone move. I
turned on the light without thinking.’

It was all right, he said.

His voice sounded hoarse; caught in his throat.

"I’m glad you have come,’ Diana said.

There was something healing in the simple phrase. He
stopped feeling like a wild animal frightened by a flashlight.
The beating of his heart stopped hurting his throat.

He opened his eyes again.

There was light coming in from the hall. Her figure was
only partly dark against it. There was a white-and-silver
mist around her, a silver mist with dewdrops in it. Arotmd
her head the light drew a line of pale gold.

"Thank you,’ he said at last. "I’m glad to be here.’

"Will you shut your eyes again a minute.^’ she asked. "I
left my latchkey here somewhere. I’m afraid I can’t find it
without some light,’

"All right,’ he said, but did not shut his eyes, only shaded
them from the glare.

He watched her while she hunted for the key. Her dress
sparkled as she moved. She found the key — too quickly —
and turned toward him.

She had not expected to meet his gaze, but she did so
gravely, quietly, for a long second.

At the end of it he said: "I heard of your engagement only
yesterday. I hope you and Peter will be happy. I’m glad
he’s had some good luck. He’s had a pretty thin time, I’d
like to congratulate him. Is he coming for you?’

"Thank you. No. He’s — out of town just now.’

She could smile, he noticed, without moving her lips. The
smile was in her eyes; danced there for a moment. Her
mouth kept its grave sweetness.

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‘Bill is taking us to see some motion pictures — slow
motion — of race horses. And then dancing. He’s educating
me. A civic duty, he says. While Peter is away.’

‘Is he coming back soon?’

‘I don’t know exactly. He has some painting to finish.’

‘A mural?’

‘Why — yes. It is a mural. How did you guess?’

‘He told me he was trying for some competition for one.
What is it? W.P.A. project?’

‘No. It’s private work,’ Diana said truthfully.

Thinking of Peter slapping white paint on the walls of
Wilbur’s General Store she couldn’t help smiling, really smil-
ing this time with the dimple showing. Nick liked Clare
Desmond, but he wished she hadn’t come in before he found
out about that smile. Clare looked handsome, Nick ad-
mitted. Most people, seeing Clare in flame color, might not
have noticed Diana. But flame color hurt his eyes. Diana’s
cobwebs on the grass with dewdrops was definitely restful,
which was, of course, why he turned them back to her.

Bill, who came in behind Clare, seemed to have no diffi-
culty in looking at flame color. Bill looked particularly
glossy and magnificent and earnest. The horses’ heads under
the crystal of his waistcoat buttons looked no better brushed
and clipped and curry-combed than Bill. It is greatly to
Bill’s credit that he preserved his well-groomed air, when you
consider that his children had pursued him across the Square
in their pajamas and that he had just rescued Priscilla,
kicking and clawing from the railings. One of the spears had
caught in her jacket — a lucky circumstance, for otherwise
she would have continued her quicksilver course. Dan,
luckily, was easy to catch. When Priscilla had dragged him

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293

into this particular bit of mischief, he had been reading ‘The
Scotch Twins.’ While Priscilla was being separated from the
railing, Dan had settled down on Miss Lucinda Popham’s
steps under the lamp-post and was continuing his studies.
Naturally he had brought his book.

Bill had had to go back and put on a clean collar, he said.
He added that the kids ought to be turned out to grass.
It was natural for colts to kick up their heels. And it was no
use trying to ride Prissy with a curb and a martingale. She
was a good little filly, not an ounce of vice in her — a snaffle
was plenty.

Clare, who understood these remarks, agreed with them.

As for Dan, Bill went on, he was glad to see him showing a
little bounce. After he had been chivvied off Miss Popham’s
steps, he had cantered between Aunt Sophia’s footman’s
pale blue legs and made him drop his leash. All in all with
wolfhounds running around loose and the footman catching
his blue trousers on the fence and tearing quite a promising
barn door in ’em, it made it seem like Old Times. He hadn’t
seen so many heads sticking out of windows since the day he
and Nick tried to tar and feather Eben. Only they had to use
molasses, having no tar and only one small pillow . . . Did
Nick remember?

Nick did remember. Singleton, who had appeared during
this excursion into time past, said he wished he did. He had
just seen Eben, which was why he was late. He thought a
little tar and feathers would do Mr. E. Joceleyn Keith good.

He did not amplify this statement. He looked at Diana in
an odd way, as if he were not sure just what he might see in
her face. Whether what he saw answered his question or not,
he turned away quickly and took Nick’s hand in his iron
grasp.

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He would probably be able to use it in a week or two, IS ick
said.

Bill told him that he had tickets, bunches of tickets, for
this show, the lecturer being a pal of his, and wouldn’t Nick
come? And how about his mother?

‘Thanks a lot, Bill, but my eyes aren’t quite up to it yet.
And Mother has a client who probably wants to tell her all
about her new grandson and how the cook left the ice-chest
open and then was very impertinent. And when she goes
I’m thinking of hiring Mother for about half an hour myself.
I might,’ Nick said, smiling, ‘tell her about my Trip Abroad.’

Nick was glad, when they had left, to slip back into dark-
ness. It was a little, he thought, like being a ghost. A ghost
would, he supposed, find the real world painfully unreal. It
was strange to Nick, this world where people went to lectures
in boiled shirts and black broadcloth, or in silk flames, or
clouds of white and silver; where they danced, no doubt, to
braying and squealing noises and watched shadows flickering
across a sheet of silver and crystal. The whole thing seemed
somehow more shadowy, less real, than his dark world of
shape and texture and scent and sound. People who had eyes
knew the world with only a small part of their minds. Before
he was blind, he had heard people say that blind people’s
senses became keener to make up for losing their sight.

That wasn’t it. Your sense of hearing was no better, but
you used it; learned things from it. How the wind sounded
different in different trees. The stir of a mouse in the wall-
Water being poured from a thermos jug. Pills, too many pills,
dropped into a glass . . . But he wouldn’t think of that just
now ... It was the same with your sense of space and touch.
You were not distracted by the appearance of things. You

USEFUL INFORMATION 295

learned about tbem accurately with your finger-tips and
muscles. Someone might look at a magnolia and say, ‘It has
pink flowers — ice-cream flowers.’ A blind man would find
out more with his fingers.

Not that he wasn’t grateful for his eyes — for more than
one reason. For instance, there was Eben’s call. It was a
long time since he had seen Eben, but Nick had not forgotten
that sure sign that all Eben’s cousins knew — the pulse
throbbing in his thin forehead that meant Eben was up to
something. A blind man could not have seen that. Eben’s
voice, so far as Nick could remember, occasionally shutting
his eyes under the shadow of his hand, was as dry and precise
as ever. His pale brown eyes had their old impersonal look.
His pale brown skin kept its healthy, even tint; no blush or
pallor disfigured it. His thin lips had only their usual com-
placent twist. Yet there was the telltale pulse beating away:
like the track of a mole, burrowing.

It was natural, Nick soon realized, for the pulse to beat;
for Eben was the bearer of evil tidings. He had always en-
joyed the r6le. (‘You flunked your German, Nick. I got a
look at the grades. So you’re off the team. Too bad . . .
You’ve got a smooch on your collar. Bill. And didn’t you
have a ticket on Star of War? Well, he fell at the water jump.
Tough luck . . . Your mother’s annoyed, Peter, because you
took Polly to that dance. You know you told her you
couldn’t take Grace Miggs because your ankle was bad ... Of
course, I didn’t tell her . . . Stop twisting my arm, Nick.
M r. Robinson’s coming. You know how he feels about bully-
ing .. . No, Mr. Robinson, I wasn’t doing a thing, just stand-
ing here . . .’)

The pulse always beat throughout all these encounters, and

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

it did this evening as Eben said, ‘I hope you’re well enough,
Nick, to hear something a trifle disturbing.’

‘I shall have to be, I suppose,’ Nick said quietly, his eyes
on the burrowing mole, or was it a water snake, swimming?
Well, never mind . . .

‘I have said nothing to Bill,’ Euen went on, ‘because after
all he never had a chance. And then Bill must have money
from his wife. It isn’t like you or me, Nick, who have our
way to make. I heard about your losing your father’s money
and it certainly is tough luck, but anyway you don’t need to
be let in for something awkward. We’re in the same boat and
have to make the best of it, I suppose. Though a little capital
would have meant a lot to me right now.’

This was typically Eben — this mysterious-confidential
style.

Nick would not, he decided, ask the question Eben wanted
asked. He sat quiet, his head turned away from the light,
shading his eyes with his thin hand.

Eben was obliged to stop talking or to say something.
What he said was: ‘Have you been reading the stock-market
reports lately?’

‘I haven’t,’ Nick said politely, ‘been reading anything
lately.’

Eben showed no annoyance over this obvious quibble, but
said patiently that he meant, of course, if someone had read
the reports aloud to him. He assumed that since Nick was
ill, they hadn’t, because they were very distressing. In view
of their uncle’s will.

‘You mean that the assets have shrunk and the bequests
won’t be paid in full,’ Nick said.

‘Some of them will. The ones to my mother and aunts and

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297

to the servants and some annuities come ahead of everything
else. But this million for Diana is just so much smoke.
She’ll have this house, of course. But it will be just a white
elephant. I doubt if you even get your five thousand dollars,
Nick. It’s a shame,’ Eben said. (That was why he had come,
of course, for the pleasure of telling that.) T’ve said good-bye
to what he left me.’

Nick said nothing and Eben went on: ‘The market’s slid
a long way since the will was made. I’m an executor, you
know, with Clifton. At least I am in theory. I advised him
to start selling things immediately, but he was in favor of
waiting. You know how trustees are: buy at the top — sell
at the bottom. And it isn’t, of course, just the market. There
was this crazy scheme of making Joceleyn & Company a
profit-sharing affair. The whole thing’s a mess. I believe,’
Eben said, remembering his diflSculties with the tea-bag
filling machine, ‘that there’s sabotage going on. Machines
out of order. People loafing on their jobs. Half the employees
haven’t paid anything on their stock and the rest wish they
hadn’t. I knew it wouldn’t work. You can’t change human
nature. And the customers are claiming our tea isn’t up to
standard, which is nonsense. We’re putting out a very good
graie — considering. You can see what the whole thing’s
doing to Uncle Nicholas’s fortune. I thought you ought to
know, Nick.’

‘Why?’

‘I — I thought it might make some difference to your
p,',ans.’

‘Why, so it does,’ Nick said. ‘Of course.’

‘And I wondered if you thought I ought to tell Peter.’

Eben wished his cousin would not hide his eyes. It was im-

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possible to tell anything about Nick unless you saw his eyes.
His voice sounded almost amused, but his mouth did not
show it. Eben was satisfied, though, that he had made an
impression. Nick’s air of composure was his way of showing
off. People were mostly show-offs, Eben considered, but
they had different ways of doing it. Nick’s was always the
boy-on-the-burning-deck style, but the news about the
money would scorch him a little, no matter how cool and
casual he seemed.

Nick’s coolness made Eben use his best piece of ammuni-
tion.

‘And when you think that if that girl hadn’t turned up,
you’d have had the Tea Company, Nick!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘So that stings, does it,’ Eben thought, and went on sym-
pathetically: ‘Why, you were residuary legatee and got
fifty-one per cent of the Company in his old will. Didn’t
you know? I wouldn’t have ’

‘Thank you for telling me now, Eben.’

Nick’s quietness couldn’t fool Eben. Nick was sizzling
inside all right: sounded as if he’d been down the head wall
in Tuckerman’s the first time.

Eben made a few more thrusts and went. Not that he
wasn’t enjoying the evening, but he had not finished )iis
appointed round.

His interview with the Princess was satisfactory too, and
much more dramatic than the one with Nick. The Princeijs
had no use for repression — it was one of her Slavic day.s.
She said what she thought of Follingsby Clifton in a stylip
that needed only a knout to make it completely effective. !

When she was out of breath, Eben told her that it would be
better not to say anything to Mr. Clifton just now.

USEFUL -INFORMATION

‘I suppose I ought not to have told you so soon. It’s prob-
ably not legal etiquette, but I thought you ought to know.
On acrount of Peter,’ Eben said.

'.J'he Princess purred that Eben had done exactly right.
She patted his arm — a gesture that made Eben back
nervously into a gardenia plant and ask hastily whether he
should tell Peter or leave the matter in her hands.

‘Telling Peter,’ the Princess groaned, ‘is not so easy, since
I do not know where he is. I believe,’ she said, with an angry
sparkle of her green eyes, ‘that it may be he has eloped al-
ready with that adventuress. In which case we are ruined.’

Eben said that they had not eloped. He had seen Diana
only that afternoon. And he was obliged to say — generously
— that he did not consider her an adventuress. The fault
was his uncle’s. When people were quixotic, it made trouble.
It had put Diana in a false position. He had explained that
to her and she had said she was glad to be out of it. She was
going to get a job. H.' might find her something in the Tea
Company.

Eben’s last sentence was drowned by Princess Lobanov’s
Slavic scream of ‘It is not that you have told her? Eben,
you are a fool. You are more kinds of fools than I ever
thought there were! Do you not see,’ she said, walking
toward him with such a threatening air that Eben backed
away again, into a rosebush this time, ‘do you not see that
she will cling to Peter now? He is a Prince, is he not? And
my heir. Or she thinks so. Although, of course,’ said the
Princess more calmly, ‘I can disinherit him. I have just put
him back in my will. I can take him out again. For his own
good. Why, the little Shatswell would be better than this.
Bertram is bound to leave her something.’

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Eben did not like being called a fool any better than some-
one would who was really a fool. This surprised him a little
as he reahzed it. However, he wasted no time in speculation
about it.

He simply said with frigid courtesy: T am sorry you are
annoyed. Aunt Sophia. I have done what I could.’

As indeed he had.

30

SURPRISE FOR PETER

Wilbur’s General Store tad never in its hundred years
of existence looked so spick-and-span. Its new white and
green dazzled the eyes. Even the white of lilac plumes and
the dropping apple-blossom petals looked a little dingy
beside it. New grass paled beside the green glare of doors
and shutters. Only the blanket of white ground phlox on the
rocky bank really competed with it.

Chippy Hacky bumped over what had been the mudhole
and now was a series of iron-hard billows. One of the sleepers
on the porch opened one eye. Seeing Diana he opened the
other, perhaps as sincere a compliment as she had ever had.
He said they needed rain. Perhaps it was needed to float him
off the porch, Diana thought. Apparently he had been there
since she left. It must have been hard work painting around
him. She agreed that they did need rain, but she did not
promise to do anything about it.

She went in to find Sam.

It was not Sam’s Roman head and shoulders against the

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bright tapestry of canned vegetables. This storekeeper’s
head came up rather higher, as far as the cans of Green
Label Beets in fact. He had a fluffy bush of light hair that
looked as if it had never known scissors. He was a sunburned
young man, judging from the back of his neck. He wore a
blue work shirt and new blue jeans. He was stacking red
and white cans of soup in neat pyramids on the shelf above
the beets. He had his back turned to the store and he was
singing loudly.

‘Vive la commuiie de Paris,

Ses mitrailleuses et ses fusils,’

he shouted cheerfully, juggling cans into place.

Diana did not interrupt this flow of melody. She listened
while he declaimed about breaking the gullets of the bour-
geoisie. She tried on a Frank Buck helmet (twenty-five
cents), a Hoover apron, pink-and-blue-flowered (seventy-
nine cents), and a jeweled cowboy belt (thirty-nine cents
reduced from fifty). She had just added the belt to her
costume and was unwrapping a Starry Bar (chocolate,
butterscotch, cream nougat, peanuts, five cents) when the
storekeeper turned and saw her.

He dropped three cans (for a quarter) with a crash, stood
for a moment with his mouth open, then vaulted over the
counter, upsetting an Eiderdown Flour Baking Set (thirty-
one cents), swung Diana off the floor and kissed her heartily,
knocking the Frank Buck hat over one eye.

Diana straightened the hat, put the Starry Bar into the
mouth of the red-headed urchin who was looking on with his
mouth watering for just such a combination of calories and
vitamines, and said severely : ‘You mustn’t do that.’

SUBPBISE FOB PETEB

303

‘Why not?’ inquired Prince Lobanov, brushing some
Eiderdown Flour off his blue jeans. ‘Aren’t we engaged?’

‘No,’ said Diana, ‘we’re not.’

‘Then,’ said Peter, ‘I certainly must kiss you.’ He did,
on both cheeks, and added: ‘You may keep the hat and the
belt — for a disengagement present. The apron I’ll have to
have back. Lilia Lyons is making up her mind between
that and the green one. You’ll have to pay for the Starry
Bar. I can’t have it get around that we give them away.’

Diana paid for the bar. She put the apron on the right
hanger on the clothes-pole. She put the Frank Buck hat
back on the pile and hung the jeweled belt over the bar with
the others.

‘I can’t accept presents, especially jewelry, from anyone
to whom I am not engaged,’ she said primly. ‘I would give
you back your ring, only somehow I think you forgot to
give me one.’

‘Mother was haviag the earrings the Czar gave my grand-
mother reset,’ Peter said. ‘Emeralds, if I remember. And
about a pint of diamonds. Gaudy but neat. She’ll be
annoyed.’

‘She will not.’

‘Why not? Were you changed in the cradle? Has the
Rightful Heiress turned up?’

‘No, and if she had, she wouldn’t be an heiress. Peter —
that ghastly money — it’s evaporated. There isn’t any
more!’

He was quiet, looking at her, his sunburn turning pinker.

‘Eben told me. He’s an executor, you know. It’s some-
thing about the stock market and the Tea Company. He’ll
explain it to you. He takes a ghoulish pleasure in it. I’m

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afraid I annoyed him because I didn’t feel worse about it.
Still he’s practically promised me a job. Filling tea-bags.
With a machine of more than human dexterity. That is, in
case you were not true to me. I told him I was sure you
would be, Peter. Only, I said, I am going to release him. It
wouldn’t be fair, I said, to take advantage of Peter s natural
chivalry. Eben agreed that it wouldn’t be fair. So now you
ean go back to Paul Revere Square. It’s perfectly safe.’

T’m not going back,’ Peter said. ‘At least not to stay.
Just to pick up a couple of things. I’m staying here. I like
it.’

‘But, Peter, what are you going to do? Not painting.
It’s awfully uphill work to make a living painting in East
Alcott. Even buildings.’

‘Painting, phooey. I’m going to keep store. Sam Wilbur’s
had a sharp attack of something — the prevailing distemper
they called it in the East Alcott items in the Clarion, but it
was an awful lot like pneumonia. He says he won’t spend
another winter in East Alcott. He’s going to Florida-; — in
a trailer. Imagine Bertha in a trailer! She says if she gets
stuck in it she will claim she’s a fugitive slave and sue Sam
under some amendment. The thirteenth, I think.’

Diana laughed, and Peter went on: ‘I’m buying into the
business, out of my wages. Sam’s going to see me thi’ough
the summer. Of course it would be easier if I had some cap-
ital. I’d counted on Uncle Nick’s legacy, but I’ll get along.
I always wanted to keep store, but Mother was set on my
being a painter: so refined! Though what the Joceleyns were
but storekeepers, I don’t know. And the Lobanovs were
farmers when you come right down to it. I’m going to be a
farmer too, on a slightly smaller scale. Did you notice my

SURPRISE FOR PETER

805

garden? I’ve got peas up that are an inch taller than anyone
else’s. And I can milk. Even Bertha says my hands are good
for nailkmg.’

He held them out. They were always strong-looking
hands even when they were painting eyes in cocktail glasses.
Now they were calloused and stained with pitch.

T’ve been chopping trees, evenings,’ he said. ‘These
hemlocks and spruces creep right into the pasture and the
sugar place if you don’t get after them. Have you ever
been up there when the thrushes were singing?’

She had, Diana said, but not for a long time.

‘I’ll take you there sometime,’ said Peter kindly.

‘Let me show you Vermont, by Prince Peter Lobanov, a
native,’ Diana remarked.

Peter grinned. Then he said seriously: ‘I’d like to show it
to — Polly.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘I don’t know what she thinks.’

‘I do. She thinks you’re the only man that ever walked
the earth.’

‘She must be crazy,’ Peter said, blushing. ‘I mean —
doesn’t she mind? About us?’

‘She knows that was all nonsense,’ Diana said. ‘I told
her.’

‘ She wouldn’t believe me when I told her.’

‘Well, she does now.’

‘Do you think she’d mind it here? I expect it’s lonely.
In the winters. Do you think she’d ’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’ Diana said.

‘I can’t, imless I rob the till. Sam hasn’t paid me yet.
He obeyed your orders.’

S06

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

‘Take Chippy.’

‘What?’

‘Back him up. I’ll put in the gas. A tank full. Engage-
ment present. Sam will let me charge it,’ Diana said.

‘Who’ll keep store while I’m gone?’

‘I will. I’ll get somebody. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it with
Sam.’

It was fixed in a surprisingly short time. Peter filled the
woodbox, telephoned to Boston, visited Sam’s bedroom,
came out with the first money he ever earned in his pocket,
drove off in a golden haze of dust.

It was hard to believe that it was Peter. The Peter she
remembered was sulky when he was serious, bitter when he
was gay. She remembered him at his mother’s table leaving
his brook trout meuniere untouched on his plate, crumbling
bread, stabbing idly at spun sugar and marron parfait,
making a meal of two olives and a demitasse, a meal that
gave him plenty of time to breathe sarcasms about the guests.
This sunburned young man, who seemed to have grown too
big for the clothes in which he had come to East Alcott,
who had stood looking at her affectionately as he wolfed
down what he referred to as a stirrup cup of chocolate cake,
was someone entirely new.

There were moments when Diana almost regretted giving
him back the Frank Buck hat!

She thought about him and Polly as she turned back
Bertha’s snowflake candlewick spread, as she propped up
the window with the notched stick, as she drew in a long
breath of the sharp, sweet air, and took one last look at the
stars through the apple blossoms.

‘At least,’ she thought, burrowing in under the log-cabin

SURPRISE FOR PETER

307

quilt, the sunburst quilt, and the double wedding-ring quilt,
‘Uncle Nicholas's money did some good before it vanished.’
Then she went to sleep and forgot Paul Revere Square —
almost.

It was pleasant to run downstairs the next morning into a
cloud of pungent flavor — coffee and bacon, frying perch,
and graham gems. She put her arm nearly around Bertha
Wilbur’s waist and kissed her pink, soft cheek. She kissed
Sam, who was up for the first time, on the bald spot in his
white hair. She picked up three yellow kittens and kissed
them behind their rose-petal ears.

At breakfast the Wilburs spoke kindly about Peter, but
they did not say anything about his buying into partnership
with Sam. Diana did not ask them any questions. They
would tell her when they were ready. Otherwise questions
would meet with evasive answers; evasive answers to direct
questions being a Vermont specialty along with maple butter-
nut fudge. Sometimes evasive questions were a help, but
Diana had long ago found out that Vermonters were a lot
smarter at indirect answers than she was at indirect ques-
tions.

She realized, while she was keeping store, that she had
said nothing to Peter about coming back for her. She really
needed to be in Boston before long. An expert on Chinese
porcelain was going to be in town and had written asking to
see the Joceleyn Collection. It was fairly well arranged
now: that is, as well as she could do it without more real
knowledge. She knew she must have made mistakes and
this was a chance to clear up some of them.

She must be in town by Friday at the latest and she
really wanted to be there Thursday to dust things. (And on

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Wednesday — she wouldn’t think about Wednesday .) There
were certain pieces that her tincle had alwayi^ dusted himself.
Even Burwell had not been allowed to touch them. She kept
seeing the peachblow vase with a thin film of dust over it.
It was still in her room. She had kept it there because she
liked to start the day by seeing the light change on it. There
had never really been any dust on it. She was glad she had
had it as long as she had. It would have to go with the rest
of the collection, of course.

She had meant to speak to Nick Joceleyn about it again,
but somehow in those few moments the other evening she
had forgotten that she had ever been a curator of porcelains
— even an imitation one. Well, anyway the porcelains
were genuine — she supposed.

It was surprisingly easy to slip back into life in East Alcott.
Paul Revere Square began to seem like an image in a camera
finder — a small patch of red brick and white paint floating
on a blue-gray river. Tiny dark figures moved through it,
moved as puppets do without touching the ground: Princess
Lobanov with the white dogs quivering under the lash of
the scarlet whip; Mrs. Shatswell in red velvet, pink-faced,
a sort of shy female Santa Claus who might vanish up the
nearest chimney; Polly Shatswell, with eyes as sad as a
friendless dog’s suddenly changing and shining with happi-
ness.

Paul Revere Square changed from being a camera image
and became simply eyes — aU looking at her. Bill Shats-
weU’s moved slowly in his happy, red face. Sing’s scornful
black gaze became friendly. Eben Keith’s pale brown ones
were a little like a lobster’s. At least they weren’t really,
but they made you think of feelers — as if they touched.

SURPRISE FOR PETER

309

coldly, the thing at which they looked. She felt with a
little shudder that they touched her even here. Yet even
Eben had been kind about the job in the Tea Company.

Peter’s gray-green look she had encountered only yester-
day. It had changed since she had last met it. The eyes
themselves were still like those of the three wild little tiger
kittens that hid in the rosebushes and came out on the door-
step only to take up the serious business of chasing their
tails in the sunshine. Kittens could look serious and frivo-
lous and innocent all at once. So could Peter. Kittens never
looked either responsible or sympathetic or grateful. Peter
had looked all three. He was a man now.

Of those eyes that she had seen only for a moment in the
study, she tried not to think at all. She would not see them
again. And Wednesday . . .

She thought: ‘I shall dust the peachblow for the last time
and start filling tea-bags. The golden age is over, and I’m
glad.’

She sounded a little too defiant even to herself. She was
not really glad about the Joceleyn Collection. Would it
have to be sold? Or stay in the cellar of the Museum where
no one could see it? She didn’t know what happened when
people left bequests and not enough money to pay them.

As for her, she’d be all right. There was still the little
annuity, and Mr. Clifton had given her some money. She
had paid Burwell what she owed him and had bought Chippy
Hacky and, for Clare Desmond, the flame-colored evening
dress. She was glad of that extravagance. She hoped she
wouldn’t have to pay Mr. Clifton back the money, but he
wouldn’t have given it to her if she hadn’t been entitled to
it, she supposed. It was only that there wouldn’t be any

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more, or hardly any. It didn’t matter. The vanishing of
the million dollars was like a weight falling off her neck.

T wonder if he knew when he saw me,’ she thought, and
then turned her mind resolutely from that second when she
had first met Nick Joceleyn’s eyes. She might as well forget.
Someone in New York had offered him a job, a tea importing
company there. He was going — Wednesday — if the
doctor pronounced him fit to go. Unless Peter came soon,
he would be gone before she got back. (‘He’ had become,
though she hardly knew it, only one person in her thoughts,
and it wasn’t Peter.) He was going, so it did not matter
whether, when he looked at her, he had thought that she
was a potential heiress or a probable tea-bag filler.

‘Doesn’t matter in the least/ she told herself, shaking off
the feeling that a cold hand was shutting slowly, tightly on
her heart.

‘I’ll clean the store. There’s dust on those packages of
soda. I’ll have to read Peter the riot act.’

She conducted a miniature riot of mopping, sweeping,
and dusting. She worked so hard that her arms ached and
her ankles felt weak. Her cheeks were flushed and she was
hot, yet somehow she still felt those icy fingers slowly closing.

TOO MANY TELEGRAMS

T THINK i’ll go up in the barn and look at Father’s pic-
tures,’ Diana said. (Tuesday was the name of that day.
Monday had dragged along somehow. Tuesday was moving
even more slowly. She wasn’t really expecting Peter any
longer. Although if he should come before dinner, they could
still start back and get to Paul Revere Square before dark.
The days were so long now. After all, it was only a six
hours’ drive. Five and a half if Chippy Hacky’s tires held
out. But Peter wouldn’t come of course . . . )

Bertha Wilbur piled snow on gold, opened the oven door,
tested the heat with her elbow, fanned cool air into the oven
with a white apron like a new sail.

‘ Guess that meringue won’t scorch now,’ she said. ‘There,
I dropped my dishcloth: that means company coming...
Why, Prince took those pictures with him. Stopped at the
bam and got ’em last thing. I thought you knew it. Come
to think of it you were in the store at the time. He said he

S12

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

was going to have ’em framed. But there, I guess I hadn’t
ought to tell you. Likely he meant to surprise you.’

‘He has,’ Diana said. ‘And when I see him I’ll surprise
him. Of all the flutter-headed, interfering ’

‘You haven’t quarreled with Prince, have you, Diana?’

‘Not yet. But when I get a chance ’

Bertha Wilbur said soothingly: ‘Now don’t be hard on
Prince. I know you expected him back kind of earlier, but
he had things to see to down there probably. Something
might have come up. It was real good of you to stay and
help with the store, Diana. I don’t know what we’d have
done without you. But now we got Ed Robbins to help,
you start back any time. Not that we’d like to see you go,
but we can spare you. For a while. I kept the Red Cottage
swept up good. All you got to do is turn the key. You’ll
be up to stay, I hope, before long.’

‘It looks nice,’ Diana said. ‘I went in last night.’

She did not say that she would soon be standing beside a
machine that combined tea and cotton cloth into that
alluring device that her uncle had spoken of as the mouse in
the teacup.

Bertha Wilbur harked back to the subject of Peter.

‘Prince has lots to learn about storekeeping, but I must
say he’s got the knack. It’s something you’re born with or
without. Same as red hair and spelling. He’s got a nice
manner with the customers. Common — I will say for hiTn,
Diana, that in spite of being a Prince he’s just as common as
you or me — and yet he won’t stand for the store being a
place for rowdiness any more than Sam would. And he
knew right off that Byron Merrill wasn’t the kind to give
credit to.

TOO MANY TELEGEAMS

313

‘I heard him say the first time Byron come in — I was
sorting the mail and Prince waited on him and he said —
Prince did — “Road work getting on all right up Logtown
way?” “I wouldn’t know,” Byron said, “because I ain’t
had only one day’s road work this week. There’s favoritism,”
he says, “hiring folks, and when I see the Road Commis-
sioner, I’m going to tell him a thing or two.”

‘He was not drunk, but I guess he had lifted his elbow
more than once and not with any pickaxe in his hand. So
Prince says right away; “I got a couple of slips here for you,
Mr. Merrill. Comes to $1.78.” Byron give him the money
too. And did not ask for any more credit. Paid cash for
tobacco and a ten-cent pineapple coconut cake. Though
how he can live on that bakery truck . . . Now, I say that
was smart of Prince. He knew enough not to give anyone
credit that hadn’t had only one day’s road work. Oh, he’ll
make a storekeeper aU right. Now don’t you quarrel with
him, Diana.’

‘The first chance I get,’ Diana said infiexibly.

‘Well, you got one now,’ Bertha announced from the
window near the sink. ‘He’s just drove into the yard.
What did I tell you when I dropped that dishcloth? He’s
got someone with him. A girl. And a man with black glasses
on.’

It did not after all seem like a good time to quarrel with
Peter: not with Polly there with her arms around Diana’s
neck, and Peter saying: ‘Break it up girls. I want Mrs.
Wilbur to meet Polly. This is Polly Shatswell, Mrs. Wilbur.
Don’t bother to learn the name — it’s going to be Lobanov,
just as soon as Judge Wilbur is ready.’

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‘He’s changing his shirt now/ Bertha Wilbur said. ‘He’s
been watching for you.’

‘And this,’ Peter went on, ‘is my best man, Nick Joceleyn.
You already know the maid of honor. She’s that kidnaper
over there. You want to look out for her, Nick.’

The tall man had taken off his glasses and was shaking
Bertha Wilbur’s big warm hand, smiling at her with a look
that Diana had never seen — a look of gaiety and friendli-
ness. In a moment it was turned on her and she saw that
there was in it, too, a sweetness that turned the icy clutch
around her heart into a warm, gentle clasp, hardly distin-
guishable from the touch of his fingers on hers. It was gentle,
but strong, the sort of touch with which a strong man might
hold a small, fluttering bird. Was that a bird fluttering in
her breast? In that second while his hand touched her, she
did not know.

She knew only that, with the disappearance of her uncle’s
money, fetters seemed to have fallen off them both. They
had always belonged to each other. She had known since
that first evening when she had told him about his uncle’s
death; before he had gone down to the library to hear the
will read. She let herself remember now — she had shut
away the thought before, except sometimes when she was
looking at the peachblow vase, how in his grief for his uncle,
in the fevered darkness in which he was moving, he had
reached for her hand and held it as if, drowning in the dark,
he had found a drifting plank to support him.

She had soothed him somehow, strengthened him; she
knew that she had. He had seemed, as he went down to the
library to meet his cousins, poised and calm. And from that
moment she had loved him. Only — the Midas touch had

TOO MANY TELEGKAMS

315

turned her to gold and he had fled from her as if she were a
contagious disease.

But that was over. It was only a bad dream now. With
his blindness and the money, his pride had vanished too.
She knew it had gone whenever she met his eyes across the
table at Peter’s wedding breakfast. And when Peter and
Polly had at last gone away together to the small red house
among the lilacs — swept and ready and they need only
turn the key — he would tell her. They would climb down
to the waterfall among the maidenhair fern, where she used
to hide when the members of the Women’s Club came to
condole with her about Stephen’s death. She had carried
much joy and sorrow to that green and brown solitude. She
would like him to tell her there. Only it wouldn’t really
matter where he told her. In the store beside the pile of
Frank Buck hats. Right here in Bertha’s golden-oak dining-
room. It didn’t matter — as long as it was soon.

There was never, Peter said, such a wedding breakfast.
Never such a chicken pie — so golden-brown and insub-
stantial above, so white and solid below, chicken pies in
general being pallid above and dark beneath. (‘Nonsense,
Prince, it’s just three four them young roosters. I didn’t
hardly think I cooked enough. I set eggs real early this
year, but they’re awful scrawny still.’) And the asparagus!
Who ever ate asparagus that had practically pole-vaulted
from the garden to the stove (‘Well, Sam has always had
an awful good asparagus bed, but I don’t hardly think I
put enough butter on it. Slap on a little more butter.
Princess. I churned yesterday. Have some vinegar and
sugar for your lettuce, Mr. Joceleyn. Prince grew it himself.
Earliest anywhere round.’) The watermelon pickle was so

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good he’d like a third helping, please, and some of the
rhubarb and strawberry conserve, and just a dash — half a
pound or so — of cottage cheese — you must give Polly a
lesson, Mrs. Wilbur. (‘Why, I’d be glad to, but I hope she’ll
make a better batch than this. Somehow the milk didn’t
sour quite quick enough. It’s just a mite rubbery. I do hate
cottage cheese to creak when you chew it . • • ’) As for the
lemon meringue pie — words failed him.

‘You must have known I was coming,’ Nick Joceleyn said
in that tone that set the bird fluttering his wings close to
Diana’s throat now. ‘I believe this pie was made for me.’

It was, Bertha Wilbur assured him. It was the last thing
Prince had said when he telephoned and she asked him about
the dinner — Prince could call it breakfast if he liked, but
he’d be having breakfast a whole lot earlier than two o’clock
if he was going to be a storekeeper — he said lemon meringue
pie was his best man’s favorite dessert. But if Mr. Joceleyn
would stay a few days she’d make him one with a higher
meringue. She guessed she must have been stingy with the
eggs.

‘If the meringue were any higher, the pie would float away,
and what good would that do anyone?’ Nicholas Joceleyn
asked.

Even when he talked about pies, his voice was thrilling.
If he had recited the alphabet, it would have set Diana’s
heart beating again. His voice blended in her mind with the
sound of water rushing over the falls in the green coolness:
clear brown water with green shadows in it, lashed suddenly
into white foam; water that had in the tumbling depths a
deep-toned sweetness, in its shallows an eager ripple. It
chuckled happily around boulders, sang over pebbles among
forget-me-nots. And it wasn’t far away . . .

TOO MANY TELEGRAMS

317

She hardly heard the talk around the table. She knew
Peter was telling how clever he’d been to surprise her, how
he’d made his plans and how everything had fitted. It
didn’t really matter just when he had telephoned, so long
as they were all sitting together at the table now.

There was a sacramental quality about the meal. Sam
Wilbur, thin and transparent-looking from his illness, so
carefully shaven, so neat in his dark blue serge and the stiff
white shirt and collar, turned a benevolent look on his four
guests. He was proud and pleased that he had married his
young partner to that nice plain girl — no nonsense about
her and good help for Prince; keep him steady. Sam’s look
had kindness and simplicity, yet there was shrewdness in it
too.

He might have posed for a statue of Justice with Bertha
at the other end of the table representing Peace and Plenty.
They supplemented each other as married people ought to
do: as Peter and Polly did already. It was strange to see
that even in their half-hoxir of marriage Peter had grown
more manly, Polly less brusque.

Only what, Diana thought, was there for her to give Nick,
who had in himself all sources of strength? Why, nothing,
not even that golden weight that had been around her
neck; not even eyes for him to see with. But what of it?
She would be, somehow, of some use to him. She would be
better than she was capable of being. She would learn the
last and best generosity and free him from any need of
generosity; go to him empty-handed, let him do the giving.
And she would let him be free; let him take his eagle flights
over the world, if he liked. Fly above the clouds while she
stayed below, waiting, watching, like that first day. She

318

PAUL EEVEBE SQUARE

wouldn’t try to hold him safe in a stuffy house . . . except for
a little while . . . and soon . . .

‘You’re not eating anything, Diana. Let me get you a
cut of apple pie, if you don’t care for the lemon,’ Bertha
Wilbur said.

She became conscious that she had been sitting there with
the fork in her hand. She didn’t know how long. She began
to demolish the sunset-tipped mountain peaks.

‘1 must learn to make lemon pie,’ she said, and then
blushed because she met Peter’s mischievous green-gray
eyes.

She asked hastily how he had managed to elope from Paul
Revere Square without everyone’s knowing.

‘We didn’t,’ he said. ‘The Square knew it perfectly well,
but it looked the other way, knowing it wouldn’t have to
send presents. You look disappointed, Diana. Is it because
you yearn to think of us leaving the Square pursued by wolf-
hounds? Alas, for Romance! Even the Dowager (since
1 :15 p.M.) Princess Lobanov said it would be economical to
elope. She did not say for whom. She just told us we should
thus avoid the set of silver match-boxes with our initials,
the stream-lined cheese set, the framed photograph of
Whistler’s Mother, the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
cocktail glasses. Wasn’t that what she said, Polly? ’

‘No,’ said Polly.

‘So she gave Polly that clump of emeralds and diamonds
that you see on her finger just above that plain gold band.
She — er — happened to have it in the house. Nifty to
wear at the dishpan. The seal ring I am wearing is some-
thing Polly — er — dug up for me. This is called the im-
pressive double-ring ceremony.’

TOO MANY TELEGRAMS

319

‘She gave us ten gallons of gas too,’ Polly said.

‘And her blessing. She even said that I might have done
worse. She feels,’ said Peter, ‘that I have had a Narrow
Escape From an Adventuress.’

‘I wish,’ said Polly wistfully, ‘that anyone had ever
thought I was an adventuress.’

Her husband said, ‘Now, Princess Lobanov, aren’t you
enjoying your elopement?’

Polly said that she was, but that didn’t interfere with its
being monotonous always to be known as a good sensible
girl who lived on the same side of the Square.

‘Well,’ Peter said, in a burst of chivalry, ‘if it’s going to
make you feel any better 1 think you are an adventuress.
Who was it who had the enterprise to get copies of our birth
certificates and send them to East Alcott by Air Mail,
Special Delivery? If that wasn’t adventurous!’

‘It only got here a day later than the regular mail,’ Bertha
Wilbur said.

‘That was Sing,’ Polly told them. ‘He went down to
City Hall for the certificates as soon as Peter telephoned to
him. He didn’t even consult me. That’s how romantic I
am — like a sack of potatoes. Sing’s grown another inch.
He’s planning to start an Ice-Cream Bar; says there are
millions in it if you work it right . . .’

It was after five when the telegram came. It had been
telephoned to the store from Piedmont. Young Ed Robbias,
who was helping at the store came hurrying over with it.
He had written it down on a gray slip that had WILBUR’S
GENERAL STORE printed on it in red.

‘I guess it’s good news,’ he said, with eyes full of doglike

820

PAUL REVERE SQUARI

adoration turned on Diana. He had known her two days
now.

Diana did not say whether it was good news or not. She
got up quietly, saying that she must answer it, and, followed
by Ed, went back to the store.

‘You know it was kind-a-funny,’ Ed remarked, striding
after her — it was queer how quick she could walk when she
had a mind to; he could hardly keep up with her quick step
— ‘you know they sent that telegram twice. Except they
got your name wrong on the second one. I couldn’t hear
Laura’s voice good. When she said the first name, I mean.
I got the Joceleyn all right, but the first name sounded some
like Nickala. It began with N. anyway. I didn’t bother no
more to ask Laura to spell it out, because I found it was the
same message over again, seems so. She was mad me asking
her to spell it over. “N for Nincompoop,” she says. “ W’ho’s
the nincompoop sending a message twice.?” I says. If she
was not my third cousin I would tell the Telephone Com-
pany. She did not speak with a smile in her voice, and she
said very sharp that she supposed she could deliver it in
person. She always had lots of time, she said. I come as
quick as I could with it.’

‘Thank you, Ed. I’m sure you did,’ Diana said.

She had reached the office now. She started to pick up
the telephone. It rang under her fingers, and she put the
receiver to her ear.

Ed was weighing out primes for a customer.

‘This telegram is for Peter,’ she called to him. ‘I’ll tak^
it for him.’

‘I’ll answer mine later,’ she added to the boy after she
stopped writing.

TOO MANY TELEGRAMS

321

Laura Wilbur, who was Sam’s niece, was still talking.

‘I’m awful glad for you, Diana, and for Prince,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Laura. I’ll tell him and I’ll see that he gets
the message. Yes, it’s fuimy about the second message . . .
Yes, perhaps you’d better read it . . . Thank you ... I sup-
pose Peter’ll get a lot of telegrams now. Congratulations,
you know.’

‘If there is. I’ll bring them up when I go off duty. And
copies of the other two.’

Ed had time to wonder, as he tied up the prunes, if Diana
felt bad about Prince getting married. She looked awful
white as she went off with the two slips of gray paper.

WINDING ROAD

She beat down her sense of hurry and desperation, forced
herself to walk the short distance to the house, forbade her-
self to look back over her shoulder for the figure of Ed
Robbins waving another gray-and-red slip with the name
Nicholas Joceleyn clearly written on it this time. For Laura
was too eflSicient to let that idea about Nicholas and Diana
being the same name get by for long. As soon as she heard
the name of Peter’s best man . . .

Any minute now someone might tell her. Any minute
now someone might drive into the Wilburs’ yard to comment
on that other piece of news. Just to be neighborly. And
anyway when Laura went off duty . . .

Diana allowed herself to kick savagely at a dandelion’s
golden face, but she was calm as she came back into the
kitchen. Polly was wiping glasses while Bertha washed them.
Peter was putting them back into the cupboard.

Her voice, Diana thought, sounded casual — or almost

WINDING ROAD

323

casual — as slie announced that she must start back to
Boston.

‘It’s late to start, Diana/ Bertha Wilbur protested.
‘Stay tonight and get off early in the morning. Aren’t you
going to get Prince and Polly’ (Polly had already ceased to
be Princess. She couldn’t live up to it, she said. Four hours
was enough!) ‘settled in the Red Cottage.^ Why, it’s knee-
deep probably. You’ll have to hoe it out, likely. And while
you’re hoeing, Mr. Joceleyn can see the farm. Climb the
hill and all. No, sir, it’s no mountain. Just a hill, but the
view is about the neatest view. And I got a room ready for
you. It’s a pity for Mr. Joceleyn to turn around before he
had seen anything of East Alcott and he must be tired. Do
stay, both of you.’

No, she must be there early in the morning, Diana said.
It was business. Mr. Joceleyn could stay and go by train
when he got ready, unless he would trust himself to Chippy
Hacky.

She couldn’t keep the note of desperation entirely out of
her voice. It soimded in her ears like a breathless plea for
help instead of the light tone she had intended. How it
sounded to Nick Joceleyn she could not tell, but his own voice
did not seem entirely steady as he said: ‘I — I might be
handy tying your car together. I hope you have a ball of
string along.’

She always carried one, Diana said.

She walked upstairs, instead of running, instead of dancing,
but she wasted no motions over the packing of her bag.
Things were jammed in anyhow. She heard the big clock
in the hall wheeze the half-hour.

(Hurry! Hurry! Laura goes off duty at five-thirty. She’ll

324

PAUL REVEKE SQUARE

be up here. Asking questions ... Is there someone named
Mr. Nicholas . . . ?)

She had meant to copy out the message for Peter, but she
did not dare wait. She had only pretended to write it down.
She would mail it to the Red Cottage. He and Polly wouldn’t
care whether they had it or not. Not tonight.

She was glad she had hung the new chintz in the living-
room, and arranged the last apple blossoms and lilacs and
the first tulips on the dining-room table, and left the new
toaster and the percolator plugged in, and the fire ready to
light. It was her way of saying: ‘I told you so, children. I
planned it this way. Don’t think you surprised me much,
you darlings.’

She was glad she had snatched every minute she could
spare from the store to fix it for them — the little house
where she and Stephen had lived together. She had paid off
the mortgage on it. She was glad there was still some
furniture left. She only wished she had bought more.

She regretted nothing she had bought: not Clare’s red
dress, nor Chippy Hacky, nor the Red Cottage. She had
meant it for vacations, skiing week-ends, to lend as she was
lending it now. Perhaps, now that she was poor again, she
could afford to stay in it a long time . . . not alone . . .

She caught her breath partly because of her hurry, partly
because of a sense of perilous sweetness, so close, so fleeting.
If she were late . . .

She walked sedately down the stairs, however, said, some-
how, all the right things, waited without twitching her eye-
brows or tapping her foot, or tinkling her switch keys while
Sam finished telling Nick about the East Alcott murders.
Sam so seldom embarked on conversation with a stranger

WINDING ROAD

325

that she would not interrupt him. Apparently he did not
regard Nick as a stranger. Nick had a listening face. As he
stood, leaning easily against the pillar with a curtain of
woodbine swinging its tendrils behind him, with his dark
glasses dangling from his thin fingers, completely absorbed
in a fifty-year-old murder, he reminded Diana for the first
time of his mother.

It was a delightful faculty, that of losing yourself in some-
one else’s words so completely that you became for the
moment only the instrument on which the speaker was
playing, sounding for him the notes of pity, of mirth, of
horror. It was, however, a difficult trait for Diana to
appreciate just then.

From where she was standing she could see down into
Piedmont Center. The small green spot outside the yellow
cube of the telephone office was Laura Wilbur’s car. Any
moment now Laura might come out. After that it would be
only five minutes, seven at the most . . . Luckily Sam’s style
was terse.

The door of the telephone office opened. A pink figure
came out. Laura, undoubtedly. Pink was her color: had been
before she weighed a hundred and eighty-three. Was so
still. Laura had one idea at a time. The pink figure disap-
peared into the green car. Nick was shaking hands with
Sam Wilbur, with Bertha, with Peter. He stooped and kissed
Polly just above the right eyebrow.

The green car started, moved along the white ribbon of
Piedmont’s concrete road, turned off on the dirt road, dis-
appeared imder the brow of the hill. There was still time,
if he got in now . . . now.

He got in. Chippy Hacky’s starter coughed, whinnied.

326

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

balked a moment, then leaped into action. They were out
of the yard, dust followed them down the road under the
maples. There was still a cloud of it hanging in the air when
Laura Wilbur’s green car passed the fork where the hill
road turns oflF. Laura did not notice the dust especially.
There was plenty of it on the daisies and red clover. She
was intent on laying out Ed Robbins. She had checked up
with Boston and there were two telegrams: three, counting
Prince’s, each with the most exciting message that had ever
come to East Alcott. And this Nicholas Joceleyn — he was
Peter’s best man. She had heard Mis’ Dunbarton tell Mis’
Sawyer so on the 118 line — he was going to get his message,
even if Laura delivered it in person.

It was only partly out of curiosity that she was going two
miles out of her way in this dust. It was for the honor of the
Company too. Nicholas Joceleyn’s telegram lay on the
seat beside her in its official yellow envelope on top of the
pile of messages for Prince and his wife. It was certainly an
exciting day, what with an elopement and all.

Laura, not having just hurtled up into a wood road like
the side of a house, did not realize half how exciting.

She did not connect the dust settling on the hawkweed
and even on the cinnamon fern with the honor of the Tele-
phone Company. She only sneezed and thought that they
needed rain.

Nicholas Joceleyn looked at the cascades of maidenhair
falling in green spray over the banks of a leafy tunnel and
said: 'We didn’t come this way, did we? I don’t seem to
remember the ferns.’

'It’s a short cut. Peter wouldn’t know it,’ Diana said
truthfully.

WINDING ROAD

327

'I like this green twilight/ he said.

He took his glasses off, and held them in his hand. He
looked relaxed and easy. Chippy Hacky’s jouncing and
chattering over stones did not seem to disturb him. He did
not try to talk above the noise, but sat there in a silence
that seemed part of the hush of the woods.

The little car, having scrabbled to the top of the gullied
road, had made another sharp turn and was now running
quietly, slowly, down a twisting grass-grown track. There
were white birches along it. Through them the hills were
a deep, clear blue, like a glimpse of the sea from a wooded
shore. Suddenly they stood clear — Hunger’s blue pin-
nacle, Hogback Man’s sharpened, flattened length, the
sharply notched shoulder of Catamountain. The sun was
drawing water behind them. Billows of gilt-edged, inky
clouds were piled above them. Far to the left Couching
Lion sulked with his head on his paws and watched the air-
plane beacon flash red and white. Mansfield’s high-chinned
profile was only a faint blue shadow.

‘Aren’t we running north?’ Nick Joceleyn asked.

‘The road runs north for a while, but we’re going east too.
Boston’s east of us, you know.’

He seemed satisfied with this fragment of truth.

‘It’s wild, isn’t it?’ he said, contentment in his voice. ‘I
thought I heard a hermit thrush.’

Diana stopped the car. They had reached the top of
another hill. The water boiled and grumbled in the radiator.
As it cooled and grew quiet, there came again the clear,
unearthly loveliness of the hermit’s call:

‘Oh spheral, oh spheral.

Oh holy, oh holy . . . ’

328

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

In the silence that followed he must, she thought, hear the
beating of her heart. Either he did not hear it, or did not
wish to. He began to talk about birds. Were the thrushes
common here? What kinds had she seen?

She could talk about birds and would, she thought defi-
antly, give him what he wanted. She rolled off the names —
the sparrows, the warblers, the woodpeckers, the marsh
birds, the finches.

"I saw a charm of goldfinches yesterday,’ she said.

"A what?’

^ A charm — it’s the name for a flock of goldfinches, like a
covey of partridges, or a bevy of quail.’

‘A charm,’ he repeated with his listening look; pleasure in
it, amusement and interest in his voice; 'that’s pretty. I
like to think of that. A pattern of black and gold, across
spiky thistle leaves and purple tufts. It must be funny to be
a goldfinch and never sit down except on a thistle.’

She laughed at that, and the cold fingers — they had been
clutching at her heart again — opened a little way.

'Are there other names like that?’ he asked.

'Lots of them, but I can’t remember them all. Except a
murmuration of starlings. And a watch of nightingales.’

The thrush sent its liquid music once more through the
green twilight.

'The hermits are lovelier,’ he said. ‘A watch of thrushes —
that would be something to hear.’

'Yes, it is.’

'You’ve heard it?’

'This morning. Just after sunrise.’

'Where were you?’

'Oh, walking. On the hill above the house. I — couldn’t
sleep.’

WINDING ROAD

3^9

^Couldn’t you?’ he asked, and then, as if he were stepping
back from a precipice, he added quickly, ‘I — I suppose you
are on the route of the spring migration here.’

The car had cooled now. So had the evening. So had that
hand near her heart.

Diana pressed the starter.

‘They say it’s shifted this year, so that we’re the center of
it. There are birds around that people haven’t seen for years.
Kildeers, for instance. Fields of them. They have a melan-
choly call. I never heard it before. The wilderness is closing
in on us in East Alcott. I met a lynx one evening. Ed Rob-
bins saw a bear up on the mountain. A deer came and ate
some of Peter’s lettuce. Bertha chased it out, with the egg-
beater.’

He gave his low, contented chuckle over that picture, but
said gravely: T don’t like your walking out in the woods in
the dark.’

‘No? Why?’

‘I — you might — it’s no business of mine, of course,’ he
concluded, stepping, somewhat lamely, back from the preci-
pice again.

Diana drove on in the gathering twilight.

She could not tell afterward exactly which roads she took.
There are a hundred miles of road in East Alcott. Most of
them were there a century ago. Many of them have changed
very little in the last fifty ye^rs, except for the worse. The
grass grows taller in them, if anything, and the ruts are more
deeply scored. Diana drove on most of them. She stopped
several times to let the radiator cool. Once, sometime after
sunset, she pulled up at a mossy tub with cold water running
out of it. Nick filled the radiator with the ancient rusty
dipper that hung there.

330

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

She walked around the car while he was doing it and in-
spected the tires. And of course the clothesline that tied the
bumper on. It was holding nicely.

It was not very long after that — it was quite dark in the
woods by that time — that the tire went flat.

33

HILLTOP

The spare was plat too, or almost.

‘We’ll have to go on the rim to the nearest place and buy
two more tires,’ said Nick Joceleyn.

He had looked under the seat for the pump, but there was
no pump there.

‘I’m afraid there’s something queer about the oil, too. I
put in two quarts the evening before Peter went to Boston.
Now there doesn’t seem to be much of any. That must be
why it got so hot.’

She thrust the metal rod back into its place and shut the
hood. She was having some difficulty in keeping the triumph
out of her voice.

‘We can drive slowly,’ he said. ‘It will be all right till we
get there.’

Chippy Hacky, however, had no idea of getting anywhere.
He refused to start.

It was queer, Diana said. The starter had always been one
of Chippy’s best points.

332

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

‘I’ll push it a way,’ Nick said cheerfully. ‘Soon get you on
a down grade. Shove it in second when I get it rolling and
then switch on the starter.’

Diana shoved the gear into second. She also succeeded in
shoving the car into a ditch — a good deep ditch. There
was mud in it, the only mud they had seen that day. Chippy
Hacky settled into it, comfortably, like a man settling into
an armchair after a good day’s work.

Nick Joceleyn had no words of reproach. He did not even
ask how she did it. He accepted without criticism the state-
ment that she thought she saw a porcupine.

He said in his deep voice with the hidden laugh in it: ‘I’m
glad it’s in so deep. Now I can’t possibly be supposed to get
it out. As a strong man I’m an awful washout. And I hate
being shown up.’

He helped her out of the slanting front seat with a light
and impersonal hand, asked as lightly: ‘What do we do now?
Tramp to the nearest town and get a wrecking car? ’

Diana said: ‘I’m — I’m afraid we’re lost. The last turn I
made didn’t come out on the main road.’

This imdoubted bit of accuracy did not seem to help much.

She added: ‘We’d better climb the hill and see if we can
see any lights. We’ll see headlights on the main road if it’s
anywhere near. Or if there’s a town, we can see it.’

They chmbed up a boggy hillside. The hill was topped
with maples and evergreens darker than the darkness around
them.

‘We ought to be able to see from here,’ Diana said, stop-
ping at a point where the boggy ground changed and became
a series of ledges with grass nibbled short in between.
‘There’s no sense in going up into the woods.’

HILLTOP

833

There were stars faintly shining through drifting cloud
mountains; pale reflections of stars in the misty mirror of a
pond across the road; greenish firefly flashes shimmering
through the mist around the bog-holes — but no other light,
it seemed, anywhere else in the world.

They had come to a place beyond time and space. Mist
was rising to shut them into it. Even as they stood there, the
pond was blotted out and the firefly lights were dimmed.
Somewhere to the left of them a brook hurried down in the
darkness. Young frogs kept up a shrill peeping and almost
drowned the faint sighing of the hemlocks and the silky
rustle of new maple leaves above them.

‘Yes, we’re lost,’ Nick Joceleyn said.

He sounded neither annoyed nor pleased. The statement
was as impersonal as the touch with which he had helped her
out of the car and from one tussock of bog grass to the next.

‘I’m sorry,’ he added. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to stay until
it gets light. There’s no use in playing around in this fog. I
only wish it weren’t so chilly for you.’

She wasn’t cold, Diana said. And it was all her fault for
trying to take the short cut. She thought they could get back
to the car, and then they could follow the road which, after
all, must lead somewhere. Unless, of course, it was an old
road up to a logging camp, no longer used. The last thing
she’d noticed before the headlights went off was that the
grass was getting pretty long in the middle. Still they could
try either that or walking back in the direction from which
they had come. Only it was miles since they had seen a house.

No. They’d better stay here, Nick said quietly. And he
would make a fire. Because he had been a boy scout. Bur-
well had insisted on it.

334

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

He pulled dry branches off the hemlocks, piled them in a
cleft between the ledges, found the dead limbs of a wild-
apple tree and snapped them underfoot. He soon had a fire
going, a thing of towering orange fiames that gave way after
its first burst of crackle and smoke to the clear glowing rose of
apple wood.

‘I’ll go down and get the rugs from the car,’ he said, ‘and
your coat. I can find my way back by the fire. Or if I can’t
see it through the fog. I’ll call. You don’t mind staying alone
and keeping up the fire, do you? ’

‘Not — not much,’ she said.

It was an artistic triumph, she felt, of courage conquering
timidity. It seemed wasted on the audience, however!

‘I’ll be right back,’ he said briskly. ‘Keep the fire up.’

Later, Nick, floundering through fog and mud a quarter of
a mile below, called to her, but because of the crackling fire
she did not hear him the first time. When at last she heard
his voice, it came from a point far to her left, over near the
brook.

It was a strange melancholy call, a little like the cry of a
loon, a little like a distant foghorn.

‘No one else calls Like that,’ she thought. Then she an-
swered with the yodel that she had learned in Switzerland.
It would pierce the fog, turn him toward her.

‘He mustn’t,’ she thought, with a little cold shudder, ‘go
so near the brook.’

As she sent her voice ringing again into the hollow dark-
ness, she seemed to reach through it and touch him on the
shoulder. His answering cry, faint and far off, was like a
contraction in her own throat. It was wistful, urgent, un-
earthly.

HILLTOP

335

She called again, louder; she threw more hemlock on the
fire. It blazed up fiercely and in its snapping roar she could
not tell whether his voice had moved toward her. It still
sounded faint and far away.

^He must see it. Must hear me,’ she thought, fanning the
fog out of her stinging eyes. ‘Oh, let him hear me, 'please

Her yodel had a despairing note now, but it was answered
from close at hand. In a moment he was inside the circle of
firelight, looking taller than ever as he strode into it through
the curtain of mist and smoke.

‘Siegfried,’ she thought; half expected to hear the fire
music.

He shrank in the orange glow to a tired man with a bundle
in his arms. His breath was coming hard and he did not
speak, but managed a smile that relaxed the line between his
dark brows and loosed his tense lips.

‘I’m soft still. Sorry to be so long,’ he said after a while.
‘Stupid of me — floundering around like that.’

‘It’s easy to get off the path in this — in any bog,’ Diana
said. ‘And the smoke must have made the fog even thicker
between you and the fire. You were close to the brook,
weren’t you?’

‘Too close. There must be a fall there somewhere. I was
right on the edge of a gorge for a minute. Just after I called
the second time. Then I heard you.’

‘Yes, I know.’

She said nothing more. She could not bear to think or talk
about it.

He got up and went back toward the evergreens.

‘There ought to be a balsam somewhere around. Ah —
here’s one. Just about the right size.’

There was a sound of chopping.

836

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

‘What are you doing?’ Diana asked as the young tree
crackled and swished to the ground.

‘Making you a bed. You don’t carry a pump, but you had
a hatchet in your tool box. I consider it a good choice.
I’d a lot rather chop than pump tires.’

‘I don’t need a bed. Please don’t bother. I’m not sleepy.
Even if I were I could sleep on the groimd with one of those
rugs.’

‘It won’t take a minute. And you’ll like it. The ground
has a way of humping up and hitting you in the night.’

‘The nights are short now.’

{So short. So short. And we hare only this one.)

If he heard the undertone, he did not pay attention to it.
He went on slashing branches from the fallen tree; cut young
hemlocks, slashed more branches; laid the frame in a place
sheltered from smoke and wind; thatched the springy,
scented branches into a mattress.

‘You’ll never want to sleep on anythmg else after you try
this,’ he said, laying a rug neatly over it.

‘I’m not going to sleep on this,’ Diana asserted.

‘I would hate to knock you down. I probably could, be-
cause I have the hatchet.’

‘Oh — cave-man stuff.’

‘It comes out m the most effete of us,’ he admitted gravely.
‘Let me, please, have the satisfaction of thinking I am some
use m the wilderness. I leave cars in ditches. I can’t blow up
tires with a siagle puff as a strong man should. I get lost in
bogs and have to be yodeled out of them. But I can make a
couch fit for a wandering Princess. Please try it.’

She tried it and lay there quietly, looking up at the dim
stars behind the hurrying cloud wrack.

HILLTOP

337

He covered her with her coat and turned away.

"What are you going to do?*

He answered her gently as one does a child temporizing for
one more minute of life and light: "Smoke a pipe. Fix the
fire. Make myself a bed. I’ve plenty of stuff cut. Go to
sleep. And report any crumpled rose leaves to the manage-
ment. Good night.’

At least she could watch him; could see against the firelight
that sharply cut nose and chin and the pipe adding its small
puff of smoke to the other smoke that was blowing above the
mist. She could see, too, the obstinate tuft of hair that
pushed up from the crown of his head like a small boy’s cow-
lick — an endearingly stubborn tuft of hair, and the strong
hands cupped around the tiny flame of the match. He
smoked about as much bulk of matches as of tobacco. The
small spurt of flame would light up his face for a moment,
thrusting the shadows upward, giving it a curious rugged-
ness.

"The shadow of a rock — in a thirsty land.’

The words drifted through her mind. She was thirsty — a
little: the thirst that is something like sleep.

Yes, he was like a rock. She had been a fool to try to move
him. It wasn’t, she knew now, his blindness that had sep-
arated them, or the money. It was simply that for him she
didn’t exist. His new look today, the brilliant smile with
the tenderness and sweetness in it, was only the look that he
turned also on Polly, on Peter, on Sam and Bertha, on the
three tiger kittens. Even on Ed Robbins bringing that
telegram. It was Eleanor Joceleyn’s listening look, human
in its sympathy, but impersonal too — as impersonal as the
stars, or as the drifting clouds that make the stars, too, seem
to drift.

PAUL EEVEBB SQUARE

The whole world seemed to be blowing away around her.
The clouds with the stars slipping in and out seemed part of
the voice of the brook with its rush and roar, part of the wind
in the hemlocks, part of sleep . . .

It was dark when she woke. The fire had died down to a
few pink coals. There was no watching figure beside it. Fear
that he might have wandered oflf again toward the falls
clutched at her. She got up and, with eyes sharpened by fear,
looked into the darkness around her. The stars had gone.
The night was blacker than ever.

She found him. There had been only a thin wall of spruces
between them. At first his face was only a light blur against
his dark pillow. Then, as her eyes grew used to the faint
light, she could see its curves and hollows. She knew them all.
They had been in her mind since the day in their uncle’s
oflfice, when she had picked up the picture of the man with
his arm in the sling.

He had looked gay and reckless in the picture; fevered and
tragic that night with the blood and the ink and broken glass
around him; indifferent and courteous behind his black
lenses all the other times — imtil today. Today — no
yesterday it must be now — he was tender and friendly.
Yet it was the same face that she was seeing now in the pink
glow of the dying fire.

For the first time and for the last she could really look at
him, trace in his sleeping face the likeness to Stephen Joce-
leyn. The strong line of the black brows that almost met
over his arched nose, the jutting chin with the cleft in it,
the deep creases in the cheeks were all Stephen’s. Only
Stephen’s eyes had been brown and had looked at the world
with a gentle melancholy and vagueness.

HILLTOP

339

Those eyes under those black-fringed lids were — not Ste-
phen’s. The curve of his lips was gentle, but it was firm, too.
Her father’s had had in those last years, unless he knew some-
one was watching him, a defeated look; but when, according
to local etiquette, he lay in the front room against the pillow
of fluted white satin — how he would have hated it! —
among the bunches of nasturtiums and bachelor’s buttons
and clove pinks while the neighbors filed past him, there was
a magnificence about Stephen Joceleyn in spite of the under-
taker from Piedmont Center.

About Nick Joceleyn, too, with one pitch-stained hand
thrown back of his head and the other crossed over his
breast, with his black hair falling over his forehead, there
was something splendid. Diana felt for a moment the com-
passion that a waking person feels for a sleeping one; the
unwillingness to take advantage of someone defenseless; to
pry and peer through a keyhole. Yet even though sleep had
touched his face with youth and innocence, Nicholas Joce-
leyn did not look defenseless. He had rather the air of a
young knight watching his armor, intent under his drooped
eyelids on his task.

How Imtg she watched him before the darkness began to
lift, sjie did not know. She realized only that the fire had
faded into pearl-gray ashes, that its last pale smoke was
fading against a sky suddenly faintly luminous.

Then the birds began.

She had never heard it before, the dawn chorus at the
height of the mating season. Most people never hear it. It
began with the first call of the robins, gathered momentum
with the voices of thrushes deep in the woods above her, the
veery’s ringing song, the broken fluting of the wood thrush.

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

the hermit’s solemn harping. In and out among the other
voices began to wind the caroling of grosbeahs. From some-
where below came the soft Whereaway, Whereaway of the
bluebirds, the plaintive call of the whitethroat, the song
sparrow’s trill of rapture.

In the marsh below the redwing’s Kong-quer-ree sounded
in the mist. The plovers piped their ringing Kildeer, Kildee.
There were elms rising out of the fog and in the elms were
orioles playing their clarinets. And bobolinks! How many
bobolinks must there be to make that tinkling guitar chorus :
Pinkolink. Bobolink. Plink, Plank, Plink.

Surely it would wake him, she thought, this world that had
become suddenly only vibrating air, only song, only, now, a
symphony so complex that individual voices were lost in it.
It was growing louder and louder as the feather fan of cloud
in the east turned rose and amber.

Yet Nicholas Joceleyn still slept. She could have reached
out, easily, so easily, and touched that strong, thin hand on
his breast, but she did not. Shut in his tent of sleep he was
close to her. When he left it, he would be far away. As far,
in his careless friendliness, as he had been in the days of his
blindness. Farther, perhaps.

Whether it was the birds that woke him at last, or the
growing light, or the weight of her gaze on his face, she did
not know. Only, suddenly, his eyes met hers, met them with
a piercing quality that kept her speechless, held by his look.

There was a second — it hardly could have been more —
before she looked away: a second in which all the melancholy
and sweetness and longing of the singing birds was in her
eyes as well as all around them. For that moment they
seemed to be floating together on that cloud of song. Then,

HILLTOP

341

with an effort that stabbed her side, forced from her one
tearless gasp of pain, she turned away her head, got un-
steadily to her feet, stumbled toward her hemlock bed —
toward any shelter where she might hide what her eyes had
showm.

Only she did not stumble far.

Long before she reached her shelter, that voice said close
behind her: ‘Oh, my darling, what is it?’

Then as she turned, his arms were around her.

‘You know, I think,’ she murmured, close to his heart.

Then for a long time no one — except the birds — said
anything at all.

The mist still filled the valley, but islands were rising out
of it: small ones that were clumps of trees. Larger ones that
were other hills. It rolled off slowly, showing the brook van-
ishing into a gorge marked by steeple-pointed spruces;
steamed off the pond with the blue fiags around it; let hay-
fields begin to stir in green and silver waves under the sun
and the morning breeze. Last of all, just visible around the
shoulder of the hill, appeared a small collection of white and
red buildings, an octagonal barn among them.

Nick Joceleyn said at last, in a puzzled tone: ‘Why, that
looks like East Alcott — that bam ’

‘I suppose,’ Diana murmured, ‘that’s because it is East
Alcott. Oh, Nick, will you ever forgive me?’

‘For what?’ he asked, holding her, if anything, a little
closer.

‘For driving you a hundred miles in circles and dumping
you on a hill within two miles of a comfortable house and food
and things. And — and telling lies, and letting the air out
of the tire, and disconnecting the battery.’

342

PAUL BEVERE SQUARE

‘Was that all?’

His voice didn’t sound angry.

‘Yes. I think so. I didn’t do anything to the spare: that
got flat by itself somehow; that was why I did the battery.’

‘You needn’t have bothered,’ he said. ‘I let the air out of
the spare myself.’

‘You mean,’ she said — ‘you mean that you — liked me
anyway. It wasn’t an accident?’

‘I mean, my darling, that I loved you from the first time I
touched your hand on the stairs, the night I heard you crying
across the hall. The night I knew you were my funny little
cousin with the pigtails grown-up. I listened a long time. At
last I went to knock at your door. I was in pain and could
not sleep. I thought we might as well bear it together, that
night, that one night. I’d be going to the hospital in the
morning anyway. It didn’t seem to matter then that I was
poor and blind and that you were rich. But you had dropped
off to sleep. I covered you up and went back to my room.
Then I upset the lamp, and you came, but Burwell came too.

‘I was so hopeless in the hospital. I used to listen for your
step and be rude when you came. And you got engaged to
Peter. I tried to hate you, but I didn’t make much of a job of
it. I couldn’t see your loveliness, but I could always feel it,
breathe it. Not just the mayflower smell that’s in your hair,
but your goodness and sweetness.’

‘But I’m not good. I — I kidnap people and scheme and
plot. Only I never will again. Never. Because there mustn’t
be anything between us. I’m ashamed, but I had to know —
one way or the other. I couldn’t bear it any longer, not
knowing.’

‘Do you know now? Are you quite sure?’

HILLTOP

343

‘Yes, I know.’

‘What is it you know?’

‘That we belong to each other.’

‘For always?’

‘For always.’

A pair of cedar waxwings hopped around in a red elder-
berry bush and listened to this performance. They raised
their crests and hissed to each other gently. Apparently they
decided human beings were ridiculous, as, from a waxwing
angle, they undoubtedly are.

‘Shall we go back to East Alcott and get Judge Wilbur to
marry us?’

‘When?’

‘This morning.’

‘Oh,’ Diana said, ‘not this morning!*

‘This afternoon, then.’

‘Even in East Alcott, which believes in marriage and
makes it easy, there are some formalities to be observed.
They have that liking for birth certificates. Just a fad, of
course.’

‘I have them,’ Nicholas Joceleyn announced with a
chuckle. ‘Sing does nothing by halves. He got ours at the
same time as the others. “As long as we were all born in the
Square,” he said, “we might as well get some good out of it.”
And,’ continued Nick, ‘you might as well know that if you
had tried to drive out of the State of Vermont you would
have had a fight on your hands. Weak as I am. Because two
can play at kidnaping.’

There was an interlude during which the waxwings flew
away, looking, if possible, more critical than ever.

Diana said at last, ‘Your eyes — I never knew they were
blue,’ and then, ‘I liked him so much.’

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PAUL REVEEE SQUARE

‘He liked you. He left a letter for us to read together some
day.’

They were silent for a while, looking at the last silver roll
of mist moving out of the valley.

‘If we are going to be married,’ he said at last, ‘we must
leave our magic movmtain, I suppose.’

‘Must we leave it? It won’t ever be the same again.’

‘Not the same. Better.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Diana said gravely. ‘I — I’ve —
there’s something I’ve got to tell you, Nick. After you’ve
heard it — you may not want me. If we’re going back —
you’ll hear it anyway. You see I didn’t let the air out of the
tires and wreck the battery just for nothing. I had to do it,
Nick, because — there’s something ’

‘Nothing’s coming between us,’ he said, holding her closely,
gently.

‘Let me go, please,’ she said. ‘Don’t make it hard for me.’

He let her go, but kept his eyes, brilliantly blue under the
heavy black brows, fixed on her with a look that was in itself
an embrace.

‘Nothing’s coming between us,’ he repeated, ‘my dearest,
not now.’

‘Not this, Nick?’

She handed him the gray-and-red slip with Ed Robbins’s
large neat writing on it.

Eben was lying. You’ll get your million. Plenty of money
to pay all bequests even without stock-market rise. He’s been
thrown out of Tea Company. Good hunting.

Bmii

‘There was another one pretty nearly like it for you, Nick.
That’s why I dragged you away,’ Diana said in a choked

HILLTOP

S45

voice. ‘It seemed as if I had to be with you sometime when
there was just you and me — our real selves, without some-
thing pulling us apart. So — well, you know now. And we
might as well go. They’ll have the message for you at Wil-
bur’s now. It wasn’t quite the same. It said you’d better
hurry back. Job for you there. I think it meant ia the Tea
Company.’

‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘We can live in Paul Revere
Square. And come up here for week-ends. This hill looks
pretty good for skiing. Do you think you could teach me?
I never learned.’

‘Nick,’ she said — she couldn’t have been running — but
she sounded so. ‘Nick — you mean you don’t care about the
money? You mean you’re not going to be disgusting and
noble and say you won’t marry me if I have it and won’t let
me refuse it because you cannot accept my sacrifice? You’re
really going to be nice!’

‘Didn’t you hear me the first time? I said nothing was
coming between us. Good Heavens, darling, we can give it
away. Help Peter with his store. Set Bill and Clare up in
that horseback camp thing he’s always wanted to do. We
can even,’ he said, ‘do something for Master Eben, if I can
think anything good enough. Because if he hadn’t tried to be
the Machiavelli of Paul Revere Square, I’d be in New York
this morning starting that job. Yes, I think we owe Eben
something.’

‘He wants a ski cabin,’ Diana said, the dimple stirring in
her cheek. ‘Oh, Nick, you are the most wonderful man in
the world!’

‘That being clearly understood and admitted,’ he said,
‘we’ll buy him one. In New Hampshire.’

3 ^

BURWELL IS SATISFIED

Apter all, they were married standing, not on the
flowered linoleum in Bertha Wilbur’s front room, but in the
old house in Paul Revere Square.

‘Let’s not leave out your mother,’ Diana had said, ‘or
Clare. Or Burwell. We’ll take Sam and Bertha with us.
Will you mind awfully being married with our friends looking
on?’

T will hire the Public Garden and invite the D.A.R., the
Boy Scouts, and the Elks if it will please you,’ he promised.

So Chippy Hacky, equipped with two new tires and with
his battery and starter reunited, took the road again. They
fed him a gallon and a half of oil (at wholesale, of course,
put in by Prince Lobanov). Using up the oil had been
Chippy Hacky’s own contribution to the courtship. No one
had let it out.

Bertha and Sam filled the back seat.

T never thought I’d see Boston,’ Sam said.

BURWELL IS SATISFIED

347

‘Perhaps you won’t,’ Nick said. ‘I’m not at all sure that
she knows the road.’

Diana patted Chippy Hacky affectionately on the radiator
as he chugged to a stop in Paul Revere Square.

‘Isn’t he a wonderful little car, Nick? You won’t make me
seU him down the river, will you? ’

‘Chippy Hacky,’ Nick said magnificently, ‘shall be stuffed
and put imder glass.’

‘He wouldn’t like that.’

‘Then he shall always have a warm corner in the garage
xmder an embroidered dust sheet. We Joceleyns look after
our cars even when they are past their work.’

‘Chippy isn’t past his work.’

‘Then — is this what you want me to say, you Serpent of
old Winooski or Onion River? — he shall have a quart of oil
every day and he shall take us, when we go away, and when
he breaks down ’

‘Chippy,’ Diana said staunchly, ‘doesn’t break down —
without help.’

‘As I was about to say when interrupted — if he breaks
down, I shall know it is purely psychological.’

‘I’ll take some nails along,’ Diana promised.

No countenance in Paul Revere Square shone brighter than
Burwell’s. This wedding he considered his own particular
work of art. Indeed it was; for the principal figures had a
careless way of saying, ‘Just whatever you think best,
Burwell,’ about flowers and food and music and important
matters like where the bridegroom should stand.

(Just wherever you say, Burwell. On my head on the
hatrack if you think best . . . Diana, Diana, where are

348

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

you? . . . Here, Nick, in the study. Dusting my peachblow
vase . . .)

‘They don’t take it serious,’ Burwell complained to Sam
Wilbur.

Sam, having recovered from his embarrassment at being
waited on at dinner by a gentleman in a dress suit, now spent
a good deal of time in Burwell’s pantry discussing Boston’s
historic monuments. They would begin at some point such
as the Old State House, but generally returned before long to
the Joceleyn family.

Sam was of the opinion that matrimony need not be taken
too seriously. A man, he said, might just as well give in, and
be cheerful about it. Men did not have much chance in New
England anyway. Being outnumbered.

These sentiments were deliberately produced to the
rhythm of Burwell’s silver polishing with solemn pauses
between.

Burwell confided his formula for avoiding marriage. It was
simple, he said. You just ran away when you felt yourself
reaching for your pocketbook when she saw something she
liked in a shop window. Or if you felt like buying a new neck-
tie, then was the time to run.

That would not have helped him much, Sam said. He’d
got married before he’d had either a pocketbook or a necktie.
And he had a good wife, as wives go. Sometimes he had come
mighty near telling her so. i '

In the general excitement even Hannah relaxed a little of
her dark feeling on the subject of matrimony and to consider
the merits of lobster salad and truflBed chicken in aspic.

‘We’U have no caterer’s food here,’ she said, waving a large
spoon. Hannah pronounced it ‘catterers’ which somehow

BURWELL IS SATISFIED

349

made it an epithet definitely scornful. ‘The cake shall be a
light fruitcake which can be eaten in five days without being
like lead in the stomach. You, Bridget Concannon, will
start slicing citron this afternoon in the time you are generally
taking that beauty sleep of yours. And you will slice it the
thinness of a shamrock leaf. And I will not have Michael
Connor hanging around my kitchen in them Russian clothes
of his, snapping up cake crumbs like a wolf. Irishmen to be
Russians, it’s heresy, no less. I’ll have no heretics here.’

Taking no cognizance of an experimental sniffle from Miss
Concannon, she went on: ‘Minna and Sarah, I’ll have to have
help getting the yellow peel off these lemons. We’ll make the
punch this morning the way it would be mellowed by The
Day. There’s Medford Rum for it that Mr. Joceleyn hid in
the linen closet in Nineteen Eighteen. Also Yellow Char-
troose and Peach Brandy.’

‘Is there, indeed?’ Burwell asked. ‘And why wasn’t I told
about it?’

‘If you’d found it yourself, you’d have known, so why
didn’t you as well as another? ’

‘I’m a butler, I am, not a bloodhound,’ Burwell said
grimly.

But Hannah passed this remark over lightly, and went on:
‘And if you’d known, you’d likely have set it out for Bill
Shatswell to lap up. Where would we have been then for
Mr. Nick’s wedding? It’s been fine and safe all these years
at the bottom of my own trunk.’

She did not listen to Burwell’s remarks about her wine-
cellar, but spoke on the topic of the bride’s cake, which
would not, she said, taste of either sawdust or hair tonic.
Since she would beat it up with her own two hands. And if

360

PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

anyone tramped into her kitchen and it in the oven, it would
be the worse for him. Having uttered this threat, she re-
verted to the subject of lobsters. She would go herself to the
market and snap the tails of them, and them that did not
show fight enough would never see Paul Revere Square.

‘And good enough for them,’ said Hannah, with a scornful
twist of her thumb, a Vestal Virgin’s signal that consigned
all meek-spirited lobsters to service outside Paul Revere
Square. ‘If there’s a salmon fresh out of the Penobscot I’ll
have it whole on our big silver platter, so, if you’ll get it out,
Mr. Burwell, and be giving it a good shine ’

‘I have already done so,’ Burwell informed her coldly.

‘All that’s on my mind now, then, is that Help-a-Bit place,’
Hannah said gloomily. ‘To think we’d have to take shame
before Her Royal Highness Mrs. Sophia Lobanov with a
shop in our front hall ! ’

‘If you’d take a look in the front hall you’d see them blue
boxes being carried upstairs to the fourth floor, where Mrs.
Joceleyn is to have a private apartment constructed while the
Young Couple is away.’

‘Praise be. But Miss Desmond, will she be in it still?’

‘Don’t be surprised when I tell you that Miss Desmond is
to become Mrs. William Shatswell before long. Mr. Nick and
Mis s Diana is setting them up in a camp to teach riding.’

Hannah agreed not to be surprised.

‘Thank the saints, I do not have to be in any such camp,’
was her comment. ‘And is that all the marriages they’re
pl ann ing on? Singleton, is he still a bachelor?’

Burwell reassimed her. Smgleton, he said, was still in the
market, if she was looking for someone. But Eben Keith was
engaged. To a young lady from the West. That he met ski-
ing. Her father was something in oil. ’

BUEWELL IS SATISFIED

361

Burwell made the gentleman referred to sound like an
anchovy. But it wasn’t that kind of oil. More in the line of
fuel for oil-burners. And Mr. Nick and Miss Diana were giv-
ing Eben a skiing cabin for a wedding present. In New
Hampshire.

‘And a very nice return for the silver-plated nut dish that
Eben gave us,’ Hannah remarked. The wedding presents
were not individual tributes, but a communal affair. Each
one was carefully scrutinized and awarded its place in the
scheme of things by the Committee, Bliss Hannah Concan-
non. Chairman. ‘Is BIr. Nick and Bliss Diana gone crazy
entirely?’

Burwell inclined to think they had. They’d given away
about half the money already, it appeared. Buying Bill the
camp. Giving a fund for people with the same eye-trouble
BIr. Nick had. Setting a big lump of money aside to fix the
house for a museum, so that people would be coming in to
look at china, and hiring experts — as if Bliss Diana weren’t
a good enough expert, Burwell said loyally. He heard they’d
done something for Peter too. And, of course, there was the
apartment for BIrs. Joceleyn with an elevator to it, no less.

He did not disapprove of any of these things. But giving
Eben that cabin was, in Burwell’s opinion, the limit. As if
Eben hadn’t done everything he could to get Miss Diana for
hims elf. Which was all right by fair means, but when it came
to circulating rumors about The Estate and putting it about
that his vmcle left a lot of money that he did not have —
well, he supposed the cabin was coals of fire, and, ‘I hope it
singes him. Plenty!’ Burwell concluded.

Eben showed no signs of being singed. He brought Bliss
Pfeiffer, whose father was in oil, to the wedding. She was a

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PAUL REVERE SQUARE

quiet girl with a habit of putting her hand over her mouth
when she laughed. She had small, timid eyes, which she kept
admiringly on Eben most of the time, a diamond and sapphire
bracelet, and a hearty appetite. The consensus of the staff
was that skiing would do her good.

No one really looked at her very much, though.

Because of Diana.

She wore the white dress that her uncle had chosen for her,
the dress made out of clouds of dewdrops, the one in which
Nick had first seen her. He had asked her to wear it. They
had raised their eyebrows at the shop where she had bought
it at the idea of changiag it over iato a wedding dress, but
they had done it — for a certain amount — and had sent a
very patroniziug lady to dress Diana m it and to fasten the
orange blossoms in her veil and around the drift of white mist
that was her train.

Only Diana was already dressed when the patronizing lady
arrived. It was Eleanor Joceleyn who had fastened the
orange blossoms in her hair and Clare Desmond who had
fixed them in the misty train and nearly cried into it.

The patronizing lady didn’t even patronize. She disap-
proved of the whole thing.

The idea of the groom’s coming into the bride’s room and
getting her to tie his ascot! Why, he ought not to have been
in the house, much less in her room ! What romance was there
imless the bride was a total surprise? (Pronounced tuttle
sap-rice.)

Yet somehow to Nicholas Joceleyn standing at the foot of
the stairs with Bill beside him, Diana’s coming was no anti-
climax. In the dark hall she seemed to shine with a light that
came, not from the tall candles that Burwell had placed so
carefully, but from herself.

BUEWELL IS SATISFIED

353

Her hair shone through the veil like frosted gold. Her face
was grave and tender. There was a luminous clearness about
it that centered in the clear brown depths of her eyes. She
seemed to move toward him like a cloud with sunlight and
moonlight on it too.

Whether his feet were on the floor or not, he couldn’t
really be sure. Everything became a blur except Diana’s
face. The flowers and the candle smoke and the faint
throbbing of violins and ’cellos, the eyes of Paxil Revere.
Square, all melted together and vanished.

There was only Diana.

Sam Wilbur thought that ‘The Reverend’ — as he called
the old man in the curious costume with white puffed sleeves
and the cross shining against the heavy black silk — did a
fine job. Watching ‘The Reverend’s’ face that was so like
some old picture and listening to the voice that still had a
wonderful depth and clearness, Sam felt some twinges of
envy. If he had only been a Reverend himself, he might have
done as well, he thought, but he felt some doubts. Bertha,
however, did not share them. Sam, she thought loyally,
when he was marrying anyone, looked just as well as any
Reverend, even if Sam’s collar did fasten in front.

The breathless yoxmg man with the sunburned face and
peeling nose — he had appeared at the door during the
ceremony — was perfectly satisfied with Sam’s ministrations.
As an old married man of nearly two weeks. Prince Peter
Lobanov of East Alcott was naturally an expert. So was his
small brown Princess. She surveyed the backs of Paul Revere
Square decked out for the wedding with the bright eyes of a
valiant sparrow confronted by a muster of peacocks and
ready to peck their eyes out — if necessary. Sam Wilbur,

354

PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

she decided, would have made a fine bishop. She only hoped
that Sam would not think it was wrong to come away and
leave the store in Ed Robbins’s charge for the day, but they
couldn’t really let Nick and Diana get married without them
— not after what they had done, buying the store from Sam
and giving it to her and Peter, so that they could get a real
start. She did hope Ed had remembered to put more ice in
the soft-drink case. It was going to be a hot day. Well,
Laura would remind him. She had a day off and she was
spending it in the store . . .

Burwell wished that his master could have been there. He
knew it was happening just the way Nicholas Joceleyn had
wanted. Ever since the day she fried the eggs. Only, Bur-
well thought, the way things had turned out they’d needed
quite a bit of help. Sending her to the hospital with those
sweet peas — that wasn’t a bad idea. And never letting on
that Eben was telling lies about The Estate. It was true
that the stock market went down, but Burwell happened
to know that his master had sold out months ago when
stocks were up. And he knew, too, that Mr. Nick would
never ask a girl with a milli on dollars to marry him when he
was broke and out of a job. Nicholas Joceleyn, the elder,
hadn’t known anything about Mr. Nick’s blindness and that
he was broke, of course. If he had, he would have made the
wiU different. As it was, Burwell had had to fix things up the
best he could . . .

Princess Sophia Lobanov did not see her son and daughter-
in-law come in, so she was able to enjoy her own appearance.
She had a weU-developed talent for making all the other
women in the room feel that they had worn the wrong thing.
She was in filmy black today with the cool green of emeralds

BURWELL IS SATISFIED

355

caught in white diamond fire lighting it here and there. Her
long green eyes surveyed the other women’s flowered prints
and neat arrangements of dark blue with white dots with a
pitying gaze. There was even — oh, horror! — a woman in
blue lace over a pink slip. It was that sister of Mrs. Clifton’s
whose name the Princess had so carefully forgotten. Why
were people allowed to leave blue lace dresses around in
shops? There ought to be a law. And what did one have a
policeman at the door for if not to keep out things like that?

She paid a grudging tribute to Eleanor Joceleyn’s silvery
gray figure. That woman — in spite of being a designing
intriguer knew how to dress. On the whole, since Eleanor
Joceleyn had been so clever at worming her way into the
Square, perhaps, the Princess thought, she had better take
her up. AJter all, they were sisters-in-law. And the ridicu-
lous shop, she noticed, no longer polluted the reception room.
Nick, in throwing Diana’s money around like a drunken
Cossack, had evidently not forgotten his mother.

Mrs. Shatswell felt proud of her family. Bertram had
given the bride away with his usual dignity. He stood up so
straight that his head was on a level with Diana’s and, after
he had joined her hand with Nick’s, he managed to get out of
the way without stepping on her train. Bill was efl3.cient with
the ring. He and Clare both looked so happy that Mrs.
Shatswell, seeing their faces, seeing PrisciUa and Dan so
cleanly scrubbed and so excited, hearing Nick say 'Till Death
us do part,’ gave a combination of sob and sniff that almost
drowned the Bishop’s voice.

She couldn’t help it. Weddings always made her cry. She
wished Singleton would not look so gloomy. He was a hard
boy to understand. Even this morning he had talked as if he

356

PAUL BEVEBE SQUABE

had planned the wedding himself, but now he was scowling
at Diana and looking the way he did that time he ate the
green apples.

Mrs. Keith glanced impatiently at her sister Bessie whose
nose was getting red. Sentimental people always had red
noses at weddings. Mrs. Keith’s Joceleyn beak kept its
usual parchment tint. It was a reward. For not being
sentimental. Even Follingsby Clifton was blowing his nose
in a clandestine sort of way — a lawyer; it was disgusting.
And Doctor Lomond openly mopped his eyes and cleared his
throat. Why, if that sort of thing kept up, the place would
sound like the china-closet sink when it was stopped up.
She must speak to Maggie about scraping the plates more
carefully ...

Eben at least, she noted with satisfaction, kept his compo-
sure. He did not even look triumphant, which was noble of
Eben, seeing how much better he had done by waiting. Not
that Mary PfeiflFer was a beauty. She was an unspoiled girl.
Sensible. Not the cuddly type, of course. And with such
practical, non-committal coloring. Mrs. Keith had never
Trusted Blondes . . .

‘Inasmuch as Nicholas and Diana have consented to-
gether . . . ’

BurweU motioned the servants back from the doorway
and walked quietly toward the dining-room. Before long it
would be demolished — his perfect arrangement of crystal
and silver and succulence. For the moment everything was
in order: the amber pool m the yellow punchbowl with the
green dragons fighting on it, the white towers of cake, the
■salmon lordly in pink and silver among the jade-colored
heaps of peas, the coral of lobster claws against the tender

BUEWELL IS SATISFIED

357

green of lettuce, the piles of Lowestoft plates with the ermine-
draped escutcheons and the gold-starred borders. Just for a
second he could not see clearly. Mr. Nick’s and Miss Diana’s
wedding breakfast quivered for a little while behind a mist.

He thought hastily of the butler in Park Avenue Pent-
house, and pulled himself together. He was the perfect but-
ler, dignified, benevolent, courtly, by the time the guests
came in.

Those who saw the meeting between the Dowager Princess
Lobanov and her son all admitted that the Princess Sophia
put on a good show. Her smile was charmiug, if a little vague,
as she met him.

‘Why, Peter — you and Polly are like a breath from the
coimtry ! ’ she exclaimed, presenting her cheek for kissing to
each in turn. She withdrew it in both cases so that the kisses
fell on empty air, a gesture that always makes the person who
does the kissing look siUy, but naturally that was only
accidental.

‘It suits you, Peter — this rustic air, but definitely,’ she
added with great sweetness, ‘and my little daughter, too.
She looks — doesn’t she? — like a dear little brown thrush.
One expects her — doesn’t one? — to burst into song, she
looks so happy ! ’

‘No. It’s the male birds who sing,’ growled Singleton, who
had been looking on sulkily at the kissing game.

The Princess accepted this ornithological correction gra-
ciously.

‘Why, so it is,’ she said, with her merriest, silveriest laugh,
‘and they wear the fine feathers, too. I remember. So Peter,
with that splendid yellow-and-white tie, he’d be — wouldn’t
he? — our little thrush’s goldfinch.’

358

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

"Goldfinches/ Sing told her, "don’t mate with thrushes/

'Really? ’ inquired the Princess languidly. "I didn’t know.’

If Peter and Polly felt this claw-scratch, they did not show
it. They looked. Princess Lobanov thought, almost bovine
in their happiness. Well, she gave Peter up. Definitely.

She passed through the crowded rooms like some Marquise
La Rochefoucauld might have known, a little remote, a little
cold, a little proud, but with the rapier of her wit ready to
flash out. With this picture of herself clearly in her mind, she
gradually effaced the distasteful ones: Peter sunk in rustic
obscurity . . . Nicholas and Diana rich and successful . . .

She would go, she decided, as soon as Clifton paid the last
installment to her legacy- It ought to be soon now. She
might marry. Some young Parisian, sophisticated, suave,
subtle. Someone like Proust, only without asthma and not so
neurotic. After all, if Gertrude Stein with her figure could
have a salon — ! And when she found the right person, she
wouldn’t be stingy about settlements, because, while she was
always scrimping and saving in Paul Revere Square, keeping
up this enormous house, and all for Peter’s benefit, in Paris
she could be rich. She owed Peter nothing. Absolutely. Let
him wallow in his ridiculous shop . . .

Michael Connor tapped gently three times at a certain
window on the alleyway. It opened and a loaded plate was
thrust out.

"You needn’t be gobbling too fast,’ said a voice from inside,
"for they’re all upstairs but me. And will be until it’s gone
away she is with Mr. Nick. Aunt Hannah thinks I am in the
ladies’ dressing-room. On the third floor where I would not
see any of the men. How do you like the chicken mouse? I
made it myself.’

BURWELL IS SATISFIED

359

‘I never thought to eat mice, but it’s fine.’

‘Oh, you’re a funny fellah!’

‘There’s not many like me/ said Mr. Connor modestly,
through a filter of mousse, salad, and Parker House roll.

The rolls I made, too,’ continued the voice from the
wiadow.

‘I’ve tasted worse.’

‘And I beat up the mayonnaise, the way my elbows still
ache from it.’

‘Stick your elbow out the window then, and I’ll make it
better.’

‘My head’s aching too.’

‘Stick your head out, then.’

Miss Concannon put her head out. She looked in reason-
ably good health. Her eyes seemed to have grown if any-
thing.

‘Does it feel better now?’ Mr. Connor inquired after a
suitable interval.

‘A little.’

‘Listen, then, Bridget. I got that job. In the filling sta-
tion. With a chance at a station of my own. I’ve money
saved. So we’ll get the Priest to read out our names, will we? ’

‘We wiU.’

‘Is your head better now?’

‘It came on worse, all of a sudden , .

55

PEACHBLOW: DAWN

She was weapping something in tissue paper and stuffing
it in among her neatly folded clothes when he came to the
door of her room. She turned and said: ‘Do you mind my
taking it? I know it’s silly.’

‘Taking what?’ he asked gently, not touching her except
with his brilliant blue gaze.

‘The peachblow vase.’

‘Take the whole Ming dynasty if you like — but why?’

‘I — I’ll tell you sometime. Not now.’

‘I’ll wait,’ he said gravely, ‘as long as you like.’

Bill came for the bags.

‘I’ve left your puddle-jumper about three blocks off.
Mother’s chauffeur will drive you to it. Wish we had a taUy-
ho. There’s no style these days,’ he lamented, and added the
information that the left front tire didn’t look any too en-
thusiastic.

‘Good,’ Nick said. ‘Perhaps it will blow out.’ .

PEACHBLOW: DAWN

361

Bill opened his mouth slightly, kept it so for a while, but
finally said cheerfully: ‘WeU, it’s your necks, not m ine.’

They ran down the stairs. The noise and the whirl of rose
petals rushed up to meet them. The bouquet of white
orchids fell into Clare’s outstretched hands. Bill’s shout,
‘Yoicks, gone away!’ followed them through the hall.

Burwell had the door open.

T wish you every happiness, Mrs. Joceleyn,’ he said in his
best maimer.

It never would have happened on Park Avenue; it was
shockmg for it to happen in Paul Revere Square, yet being
kissed on the cheek by the bride had something strangely
pleasant about it. He stood rubbmg the place and watching
her feet running down the red carpet. People ran past him,
leaving him standing there.

Rose petals swirled into the air and were blown into the
geraniums around the Statue.

The Shatswells’ high-shouldered limousine chugged out of
the Square.

Peter Lobanov, squeezed in the comer, emerged from
imder the robe and said: T hope you don’t mi nd a stowaway.
It’s only as far as where Chippy Hacky is. Polly’s there. I
want to show you something.’

‘Do you think we can trust him, Nick?’ Diana asked.

‘I,’ said Peter virtuously, ‘never kidnaped anyone in my
life.’

‘Blackmail, I suppose, then,’ Diana suggested.

‘No. I just want you to see your wedding present.’

‘I hope it’s another nut dish. That would make six. Com-
plete the set.’

‘Sorry. It’s not.’

362

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

Chippy Hacky stood patiently outside the Quincy Gal-
leries. He had been washed and there was a new clothesline
to keep the bumper in place.

‘Polly’s inside,’ Peter said, but Diana was looking at the
window.

‘Peter — oh, Peter!' she said in a choked voice.

The pictme of the Chicken Pie Supper was in the window
and under it the card that said, ‘Paiutings of the Vermont
Scene, by the late Stephen Joceleyn.’

They were all there against the soft gray walls of the big
gallery — the Wilburs’ silo with the great thimderheads
behind it and the crows flying over; the piuk-tasseled corn-
field above the pond with the horses tugging at the load and
the pumpkias showing on the bare groxmd; the hillside in
July with the blue square that was oats, the rusty pink
square that was redtop, the purple square that was clover,
and the silvery green square that was tall timothy, all rip-
pling in the hot wind; the sagging sugar house in the woods
with snow around it on some frosty, suimy morning with the
crust just melting and the sap running into buckets, the oxen,
the men m their mackinaws; the auction at the old brown
house with the fuchsia trees at the door.

‘It only opened this morning,’ Peter said, ‘and one of the
museums wants that one. You don’t have to sell it, of course.
Unless you like.’

When she could speak, she said: ‘But, Peter. What made
you think of doing it?’

‘I’m not much of a painter,’ he said, ‘but I’m not such a
fool that I don’t know something good when I see it. And I
did want to give you a — er — disengagement present —
you wouldn’t take the Prank Buck hat, you remember. And

PEACHBLOW: DAWN

the little woman and I feel we owe our long life of married
happiness to you. Isn’t that so, my Princess?’

‘The first two weeks were aU right,’ his Princess admitted
cautiously. ‘Of course he might turn Russian any time. I
expect we’ll get along. The East Alcott store was always a
money-maker, they tell me.’

Diana hardly heard her. She was only conscious that,
through the happiness that was all around her, Stephen
Joceleyn walked too.

‘I can’t thank you, Peter,’ she said.

‘That’s fine. Then no one needs to thank anyone else.
We’ll just take it that we — well, that we belong. And part
of the year, anyway, we’ll be neighbors. Vermont neighbors.
It means something, I’ve found out. And you know,’ he told
Nick, ‘up to the time we were engaged, I liked your wife a
lot.’

‘I’ve liked her even since we’ve been engaged,’ Nick said.

There was something in his voice, not impatience, but a
controlled longing that made Diana say, ‘We must go,
Peter.’

She gave one last glance around the room with the record
of Stephen Joceleyn’s last years on the walls: his kindly
understanding of his neighbors, his happy grasp of form and
color, his knack of seeing beauty in common things.

‘I wish you and Polly could have known him,’ she
said.

‘Oh, but we do,’ Polly said; and Peter added: ‘Everyone
will soon.’

‘Can we find it again?’ he asked.

‘Find what?’

364

PAUL EEVEEE SQUAEE

‘You know.’

‘Our hillside?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have we time to get there?’

‘It’s the longest day of the year.’

‘Too long?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not long enough?’

‘Yes.’

‘But on the whole a pretty good day?’

‘The best of all possible days,’ Nicholas Joceleyn said.

Among the folds of the hills golden shadows began to move
upward. The sun slid down behind Catamountain, leaAong
the blue scallops sharp against a clear, pale sky. The wood
road was dim already.

‘Is there any ditch you’d prefer me to drive into?’

‘The other one was perfect — if a ditch is necessary.’

‘But it isn’t. We can drive up through the pasture bars.
A nice dry road. The sugar-place road.’

‘So we didn’t need to get wet that other time. You didn’t
tell me that you — you ’

‘You what?’

‘You darling.’

The smoke from their fire curled off into the twilight.

‘Can you see to read?’ he asked.

‘Yes, why?’

‘He asked me in his letter to give you this. It ought, I
think, to be part of this day.’

She took the cheap, crumpled envelope with her name on it.
Only it wasn’t her name now — exactly. The neat writing
on the ruled sheet was easy to read.

PEACHBLOW: DAWN

S65

Miss Joceleyn,

Dear Madam,

I want you to be sure he does not feel bad about me going
out this way. It is not anything to do with him at all. I guess
you saw how things were with me and understood about it.
Thank you for saying that about a man would not have to go
around limping in the next world. I expect things will be O.K.
I do not like to say anything that might not be agreeable, but
I would like to have you know that it makes me glad to think
that when he sees you, I will be looking at you too. It is some
as if I would be stiU alive, only strong and young again like I
was once. So thank you for all your kindness, Miss Joceleyn,
for the nice flowers you brought and the picture papers and
everything.

Yours respectfully

Ceusheb Magee

Nick Joceleyn said gently: ‘I’m sorry it made you cry. I
didn’t want there to be a shadow on our happiness today.
And yet ’

‘It — it isn’t a shadow. I’m glad you gave it to me. And I
don’t mind crying — when it’s on somebody’s shoulder I
love. I never did before.’

‘ Cry some more, then.’

‘I’ve cried enough — for now.’

‘Then tell me why you brought the peachblow vase.’

‘It tells why — on a piece of paper inside it. Here.’

‘Peachblow,’ he read in the firelight, ‘is the lovers’ color.
Those who see peachblow in the dawn see happiness.’

‘It was silly to bring it, wasn’t it?’

‘Very.’

‘Because I’ve seen it in the dawn heaps of times. And I
wasn’t awfully happy.’

366

PAUL REVERE SQUARE

‘Were the thrushes singing when you saw it?’

‘No.’

‘Was there crushed balsam all around you? And mist and
fading stars?’

‘No.’

‘This dawn,’ he said, ‘will be different.’

THE END